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NEW AMERICA. 



BY 
WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON, 

EDITOR or THE " A T H E .N .« U M," AND AUTHOR OF "THE UOLI LANl 
"WILLIAM PENN," ETC. 



Mtth Jllustptions fiiom (©rjjginal ph0tofliia^hs. 



COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

1867. 






1 

! 

1 

Exehafig© 

Brcwn University UblMly 



TO 

CPIARLES WENT WORTH DILKE, Esq. 

OP 

TRINITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE, 
MY FELLOW-TRAVELLER IN THE GREAT WEST, 

iritis 0oluun^ 

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 

(iii) 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Main Street, Salt Lake City . . . Frontispiece. 

Robert Wilson, Sheriff of Denver . . Page 101 

Brigham Young 146 

Bible Commwiisfs. Prophet and Family . . 387 

The Four Races 254 

New Capitol, Washington . . . . . 295 

Civ) 



PREFACE 



Some studies of past times, which have long occupied 
my pen, led me last summer to the James River and to 
Plymouth Eock. I went out in search of an old world, 
and found a new one. East, west, north, and south, 1 
met with new ideas, new purposes, new methods; in 
short, with a New America. 

The men who planted these Free States — doing the 
noblest work that England has achieved in history — 
were spurred into their course by two great passions : a 
large love of Liberty; a deep sense of Religion; and, in 
our Great Plantation, liberty and religion exercise a 
power over the forms of social and domestic life unknown 
at home. In the heart of solid societies and conservative 
churches, we find the most singular doctrines, the most 
audacious experiments ; and it is only after seeing what 
kind of forces are at work within them, that we can 
adequately admire the strength of these societies and 
churches. 

What I saw of the changes now being wrought in the 
actual life of man and woman on the American soil, 
under the power of these master passions, is pictured in 
these pages. 

6 St. James' Terrace, 

New Yearns Day, 1867. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 


PAGE 


I. 


THE WESTERN COUNTRY . 


9 


II. 


BLEEDING KANSAS 


18 


III. 


OVERLAND MAIL .... 


. 21 


IV. 


THE PRAIRIES .... 


36 


V. 


PRAIRIE INDIANS .... 


. 45 


VI. 


THE RED MAN .... 


51 


VII. 


INDIAN LIFE 


. 60 


VIII. 


CARRYING THE MAIL 


69 


IX. 


RED COMMUNITIES ... 


. 11 


X. 


THE INDIAN QUESTION 


84 


XI. 


CITY or THE PLAINS 


. 92 


XII. 


PRAIRIE JUSTICE .... 


101 


XIII. 


SIERRA MADRE 


. 101 


XIV. 


BITTER CREEK .... 


111 


XV. 


DESCENT OP THE MOUNTAINS 


. 126 


XVI. 


THE NEW JERUSALEM . 


133 


XVII. 


THE MORMON THEATRE 


. 141 


XVIII. 


THE TEMPLE 


149 


XIX. 


THE TWO SEERS .... 


. 155 


XX. 


FLIGHT FROM BONDAGE 


162 


XXI. 


SETTLEMENT IN UTAH 


. 167 



(vi) 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER 

XXII. WORK AND FAITH 

XXIII. MISSIONARY LABOR 

XXIV. MORMON LIGHT 
XXV. SECULAR NOTES 

XXVL HIGH POLITICS . 
XXVII. MARRIAGE IN UTAH 
XXVIIL POLYGAMOUS SOCIETY 
XXIX. THE DOCTRINE OF PLURALITIES 

XXX. THE GREAT SCHISM . 
XXXI. SEALING .... 

XXXII. WOMAN AT SALT LAKE 
XXXIIL THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM , 
XXXIV. UNCLE SAM'S ESTATE. 
XXXV. THE FOUR RACES . 
XXXVI. SEX AND SEX . . , 

XXXVII. LADIES 

XXXVIIL SQUATTER WOMEN 
XXXIX. FEMININE POLITICS 

XL. HUSBANDS AND WIVES 
XLL DOMESTIC LAW 
XLIL MOUNT LEBANON 
XLin. A SHAKER HOUSE 
XLIV. SHAKER UNION . 
XLV. MOTHER ANN 
XLVI. RESURRECTION ORDEE. 
XLVII. SPIRITUAL CYCLES 
XLVIII. SPIRITUALISM . 
XLIX. FEMALE SEERS 
L. EQUAL RIGHTS . 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

LI. THE HARMLESS PEOPLE 3T0 

LII. THE REVOLT OF WOMAN .... 3t8 

LIII. ONEIDA CREEK 38*7 

LIV. HOLINESS 394 

LV. A BIBLE FAMILY 402 

LVI. NEW FOUNDATIONS 411 

LVII. PANT AGAMY 418 

LVIII. YOUNG AMERICA 424 

LIX. MANNERS 430 

LX. LIBERTIES 438 

LXL LAW AND JUSTICE 444 

LXIL POLITICS 449 

LXIIL NORTH AND SOUTH 451 

LXIV. COLOR 465 

LXV. RECONSTRUCTION 474 

LXVI. UNION 484 



NEW AMERICA. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE WESTERN COUNTRY. 

" Guess these Yanks must look alive on this side 
the River, unless they should happen to enjoy having 
their eye-teeth drawn — eh, Judge?" 

The man to whom this appeal is made as judge lifts 
up his chin from a dish of hominy and corned beef, 
glances first at myself, then at my fellow-traveler, and 
after winking an eye to the right and left, says slowly, 
" Guess you are right there, Sheriff." 

Spoken, as it is, across the table of a tiny hotel in 
the City of Atchison^^the only wonder about which 
hotel is, how a place so diminutive can hold so much 
dirt and feed so much vermin — this passage of legal 
wit may need a few words of explanation. 

The Yanks now warned by the Sheriff that they 
must look alive, under penalty of having their eye- 
teeth drawn, are my friend Charles W. Dilke and my- 
self; two men of undeniable English birth and blood. 
English faces are not seen every day in the State of 
Kansas ; and these Western boys (every man living 
beyond the Missouri is a Boy, just as every woman is 
a Lady — in her own right), these Western boys, having 
dim notions of ethnology and accent, set down every 
man who crosses the River, with a white face and with- 
out a bowie-knife, as a Yankee — a traveler from the 

(9) 



10 NEW A ME BIG A. 

I^ew England States in quest of gold dust, reserva- 
tions, and corner lots. "The River" means the Mis- 
souri ; here flowing between the settled State of that 
name and the wild unpeopled region, known in maps 
as Kansas, in poetry and fiction as Bleeding Kansas. 
To a Western bo}^, the Missouri is the Thames, the 
Rhine, and the Seine; his stream of commerce, beauty, 
luxury, and art; and every man and woman, that is to 
say, every boy and lady, living in the western uplands, 
beyond this margin of bluff and forest, talks to you 
about going down to the River just as a Picardie peas- 
ant boasts of going up to Paris, as a Marylebone grocer 
speaks of running down to Brighton and the Isle of 
Wight. The River divides him, as he says, from the 
East, from the States; and the current jest, everywhere 
to be heard from Atchison to Salt Lake, says, that a 
man who means to cross the Missouri is going on a 
trip to America. Dressed in his high boots, his slouch 
hat, his belt, his buffalo-skin, his bowie-knife, and his 
six-shooter, a Western boy feels for the unarmed, 
sober, unadventurous men dwelling on the opposite 
bank of the River, the sort of proud contempt which 
an Arab beyond Jordan cherishes for the settlers in 
Galilee, spiced with the fierce hatred which a Spanish 
hidalgo dwelling east of the Duero feels for the Por- 
tuguese peddlers crawling on the western bank. 

Now, that question of drawing the eye-teeth is one 
about which I hold to an extreme opinion. Five or 
six years ago, when calling on my old friend Landor 
in his Florentine house, and expressing my joy at find- 
ing him so hale and bright (he was then eighty-four), 
I heard in reply to my congratulations, these noticea- 
ble words : " My dear fellow, sa}^ no more about it; I 
have lost four of my teeth." When I smiled, the vet- 
eran added, "Do not lauffh at me; I would rather 



THE WESTERN COUNTRY. \\ 

have lost al-l my intellect than one of my teeth." On 
the whole, I should hardly go Landor's length, though 
the threat of having your " eye-teeth " drawn for you, 
willy nilly, is certainly one to disturb a saint. But we 
have crossed our Jordan, and on this side the Eiver we 
must take our chance. 

Early yesterday, a sultry August morning, we left 
St. Louis ; a bright and busy city, full of a fierce and 
tameless life, half Saxon, half Latin ; a city which has 
been smitten to the heart by panic, such as will some- 
times fall upon Cairo and Aleppo in a time of plague. 
For a month of burning heat — the heat of a great 
plain, lying low down in the drain of a great conti- 
nent, three hundred miles from the nearest hills, eight 
hundred miles from a mountain range — cholera has 
been sweeping off her countless victims from those 
quays on which the poor L"ish labor, from those slums 
in which the improvident negroes lodge. 

No Howard Society sprang up this year to assist the 
poor, as on a former visitation of the pest, when fif- 
teen hundred of the young, rich, able men of the city 
had put their hearts into the helping work. Nothing 
had been done to meet a calamity which is always 
threatening such a city as St. Louis, built on one of 
the deepest sewers in the world. With a lack of wis- 
dom hardly to be matched beyond the walls of 
Gotham, the council had ceased to make daily returns 
of the dead, the number of which could only be 
guessed from the march of funerals through the 
streets, and from the register of interments in the ten 
or twelve busiest graveyards. The rate of deaths ran 
high, and it was grossly extended by the arithmetic of 
fear. Fires were burning in every street; lime was 
being forced into every gutter; no one dared to enter 
a public conveyance; horrible tales, the oflspring of a 



12 NEW AMEBIC A. 

Southern brain, were whispered in yonr ears at table, 
where you heard that every officer had flown from the 
cemeteries, even the felons and murderers who had 
been promised their pardon on condition of interring 
the victims of cholei-a ; that the unburied corpses were 
heaped together in the island ; that coffins and sear- 
cloths had been set on fire by the runaways ; that a 
thousand nameless horrors had been committed in the 
dead-houses and in the graveyards. The death-bells 
were tolling day and night. 

"We left the city early. Noon saw us at Macon, 
picking grapes and sucking melons; midnight brought 
us to St. Joseph (atiectionately called St. Joe), on the 
Missouri River, some dozen miles above Atchison, and 
of course on the eastern bank. At two o'clock, in the 
night, we came to the end of our iron-track, when the 
car in which we rode emptied itself into a field, at no 
place in particular, but in a patch of waste land over- 
grown by stinkweed, and in a situation generally sup- 
posed to be occupied by a ferry-boat. 

When we came alongside the last plank of the rail- 
way, the night being bleak and chilly, it was sweet to 
hear the cry of the hotel-runner (a tout is here called 
a runner), "Any one for Planter's House?" Yes: we 
were all for Planter's House ; and away we huddled, 
with our sacks and sticks, our wraps and overcoats, 
into an omnibus, which stood ready by the plank to 
swallow us up. Ugh ! what monster is lying among 
our feet? Something like a huge black dog was sleep- 
ing on the floor ; which, the moment we pushed into 
the doorway, began to snort and kick. It seemed too 
big for a dog; perhaps it was a bull, that, finding the 
omnibus open, had crept in from the Missouri chills. 
Presently, it began to swear ; such oaths as Uncle 
Toby heard in Flanders ; and on waking into con- 



TEE WESTERN COUNTRY. 13 

sciousness, tlie strange beast proved to be the driver, 
coiled up, concealed, and snoring in a buifalo's hide. 
Getting into our seats, with a dozen sleepless wretches 
like ourselves, we cried, "All right," and bade the 
driver "go ahead," 

" Gruess you'll wait for the ferry," said he, with a 
volley of adjectives and objurgations, such as ladies 
and clergymen would consider somewhat high in 
flavor. 

"When will the lerry-boat come over?" some one 
asked. 

" Well, I guess about seven o'clock." 

It was now two; the night raw and cold; the omni- 
bus choked with passengers ; and we were lying out 
in an open field. Shaking the hotel-runner from a 
doze — both he and the driver had again tumbled ofi' 
into sleep, in the cosiest corner of our coach — we 
learned that the river might be crossed, at that point, 
even in the night, if we liked to venture upon it in 
a small rowing-boat. Venture upon it! Away we 
trudged, through the stinkweed, lugging our traps, 
which no one could be got to carry for us to the river 
side ; feeling our feet down the bank, listening to the 
lap of the stream, and crying for help to the opposite 
bluffs. The bank was steep and soft, the black loam 
slipping beneath our shoes, while a dense yellow fog 
lay heavily on the swift and whirling flood. On the 
opposite heights we could trace the outlines of a little 
town ; a few white houses scattered here and there ; 
below these ran the dark outline of the river bank. 
But where was the rowing-boat ? Not on our side of 
the river; for Bill, the waterman, lodged in his wife- 
less cabin on the Kansas side; and a "Yep, yep" — a 
war-whoop raised by the runner, which ought to have 



14 NEW A3IERICA. 

roused the seven sleepers from their trance — came 
back to us only in echoes from the Kansas bluffs. Ko 
boat came over with it; and after hanging by the 
waterside for an hour, seeing the fog grow thicker, and 
fancying the stream grow wider, we turned away from 
the muddy bank, not wholly displeased at our war-cry 
having failed to disturb the boatman's rest. 

Going back to the omnibus, we found the driver 
snorting in his nook. We shall never forget the vol- 
leys of oaths and growls which he tired off during the 
next four hours ; neither shall we forget the rude and 
ready kindness with which he thrust upon us one of his 
blankets and his buffalo-hide. My friend lay down 
and slept; sleep comes to you easily in youth; for 
myself, I walked on the plank; made a second trip to 
the river; watched the stars pale out; railed against 
the stinkweed ; smoked a cigar. 

At seven the ferry-boat came steaming over; at 
eight we are seated at table in the Planter's House, 
in the midst of these rough aristocrats of Kansas ; a 
jolly set of dogs, each dog with a bowie-knife in his 
pocket, a six-shooter in his belt. 

" Can you tell me, sir, at what hour the Overland 
Mail leaves Atchison for Salt Lake ?" is the simple in- 
quiry to which the Sheriff' answers, as above, with that 
suggestion about our eye-teeth being hardly safe in 
Kansas. Not taking the reply so quickly as might be, 
I look the man steadily in the face, and repeat my 
question ; this time with extreme deliberation ; on 
which the company break into a pleasant burst of 
Satanic laughter. Then we hear from the Judge that 
the Overland Mail (to travel by which, on our way to 
Denver and Salt Lake, we have come from St. Louis 
to Atchison, its starting-point) has ceased to run by 
the Platte route, and that the officers and stages have 



THE WESTERN COUNTRY. 15 

been sent down the river to Leavenworth, whence the 
mail is in future to be sent across the Plains by an 
easier and shorter line. 

Mail, mail-agent, stock, mules, wagons, all have 
been sent down the river to Leavenworth, and we 
have no choice left us but to take up our traps and 
follow in their wake. These folks make merry at our 
expense, with a brutal kind of good nature; for a 
transfer of the Overland Mail from Atchison to Leav- 
enworth is a big blow to their town, such as people 
who have put their money in it, and who are bound 
either to stand by it or fall with it, may be forgiven for 
not seeing in the light of a joke. Being regarded as 
companions in their misery, it is expected in the town 
that we shall consider ourselves generally as victims of 
a plot, and as having had one at least of our eye-teeth 
drawn. 

In a hundred phrases we are told that the mail is 
leaving the best route through the prairies for the 
worst. The Platte route, we hear, is safe and easy ; a 
good road, well stocked and stationed ; the military 
posts on which are strong, the Indians all through 
which are friendly to white men. In a word, it is the 
route. The new route is called the Smoky Hill route, 
from a rolling mist which runs along it for a hundred 
miles. 

"Well, gentlemen," says the Sheriff", ''you will see 
it, and then you will judge. Perhaps you like having 
your remaining eye-teeth drawn?" 

One of these citizens takes from his pocket a gazette 
of the current date, in which there is news from the 
Smoky Hill country; showing that Black Kettle, 
Roman N'ose, Spotted Dog, and some other worthies 
of the red race, are out on the war-path ; telling how 
this and that lonely ranch has been plundered and 



16 NEW A ME MIC A. 

fired by the Cheyennes ; and giving lists of white men 
who have been killed b}^ these savages. By the same 
gazette we learn that in the North the state of affixirs 
is rather worse than better. A party of white men, 
coming down the Missouri, has been attacked by 
Blackfeet Indians, who exchanged shots with them, 
and swam after them, but were distanced by the rapid- 
ity with which the white men plied their boats. The 
party thus escaping from the tomahawk report that 
seven white men, coming in a boat down the same 
river, have been captured and killed by Crows, an In- 
dian tribe who have recently made a treaty of peace 
with the Government; but in consequence of some 
slight, as they allege, have burned their treaty, put on 
ochre and vermilion, and gone out, like their brethren 
the Cheyennes and Sioux, on the war-path. 

A tall, swashing fellow, bickering with rifle, bowie- 
knife, and six-shooter, lounges into the room, and is 
introduced to us as Captain Walker; "the famous 
Captain Jem Walker, sir, who has crossed the plains 
seven-and-twenty times ; after whom Walker's Creek 
is named " — a creek of which we blush to think that 
we know nothing, not even the famous name. Cap- 
tain Walker is of opinion that we shall be fools if we 
trust our scalps along the Smoky Hill route. The 
Platte road is the only safe one. When we object that, 
as the mail no longer runs along that safer path, we 
can hardly travel by it, he opines that we shall do well 
to stay a few days in Atchison, during which he will 
put us up to the ropes, and fix us generally in prairie 
politics. If we don't know what is best for ourselves, 
he has no objection to our being damned, as we cer- 
tainly shall be after making unpleasant acquaintance 
with a Cheyenne knife. 

It is clear that these men of Atchison have but a 



THE WESTERN COUNTRY. 17 

poor opinion of the Leavenworth route when com- 
pared against their own. 

Hearing that a small steamer is going doAvn the 
river to Leavenworth in the afternoon, we send for our 
bills, and have our boxes put on board. It is now nine 
in the morning, and as we have nothing to do, our 
new friends think proper to stay and help us ; a cour- 
tesy on their side to which we should offer no objec- 
tion if it were not for their frequent and sardonic allu- 
sions to the fact of our having been taken in. About 
noon an accident raises us in their good opinion to a 
height yet higher than that from which we had evi- 
dently fallen ; enabling us to quit the town, morally 
speaking, sword in hand and with flying colors. 

Sauntering down the street, enjoying our gossip and 
cigar, we note the word post-office on a shop-front, and 
on going inside we find there is one letter with my 
name on the cover, written in an unknown hand, on 
which three cents are due. Paying the money, and 
breaking the seal, I find the letter is not for me ; on 
which I fold and restore it to the postmaster, saying it 
is not mine, and should be kept for the owner, to 
whom it -is perhaps of moment. Eyeing me in a 
queer way, the postmaster takes the letter, and gives 
me back my change of three cents. "Do yon see?" 
says the Sheriff to his nearest friend ; " damned smart 
that — read his letter and got his money back ! Hang 
me if I think they are Yanks, after all." 

One touch of roguery, it would seem, is enough to 
make the whole world kin ! 



2* 



18 NEW AMEBIC A. 



CHAPTER n. 

BLEEDING KANSAS. 

"Well, Sam," say I to a blithe young negro of 
thirty-five years, a boy with quick eye and delicate 
razor-hand, as he powders my face and dabs the rose- 
water on my hair, in the shaving-room of Planter's 
House, Leavenworth, "where were you raised ?" 

" Me riz in Missouri, sar." 

" You were born a slave, then ?" 

" Yes, sar, me slave in Weston ; very bad boss ; 
always drunk and kicking poor nigger boy." 

"And how did you get your freedom, Sam — did you 
go and fight?" 

" ISTo, sar ; me no fight ; tink fighting big sin ; me 
swim." 

" Swim ! Oh, yes ; you mean you swam across the 
Missouri into Kansas, from a slave State into a free 
State?" 

" Dat true, sar. One bery dark night, me slip away 
from Weston ; run through the wood along river 
bank, down stream ; get into de water by dem trees, 
and push oberto de mud bank " (pointing to the great 
ridsre of slime which festers in front of Leavenworth 
when the water runs low); " there wait till morning, 
looking at de stars ob heaven and de lights in dese 
houses all about ; and when daylight come, creep out 
of de rushes and wade ober to the lev^e." 

" Then you were free ?" Sam answers with a smile. 

"Had you any help, in your escape, from men on this 



BLEEDING KANSAS. 19 

side the river?" — the slaves had always good friends in 
Kansas. 

"J^o, sar; me got no help to 'scape; for me neber 
tell no one; 'cause me neber know afore the moment 
when me slip away. The Lord put it in my head. 
Me Methodist, sar; most nigger boy in Missouri, 
Methodist; me just come home from chapel, tinking 
of de wonderful ways of de Lord, when some one say, 
close in my ear, 'Rise up, Sam; run away and be a 
man.' It was de voice of de Lord; I know it well. 
At first, I not see what to do ; me tink it quite wrong 
to run away and steal myself from boss — twelve hun- 
dred dollars. Den me tink, it must be right to obey 
de voice of de Lord, for me belong more to de Lord 
than to boss, and den I slip away into de woods." 

" Of course you were followed ?" 

"Yes, sar," says Sam, putting the last of his fine 
flourishes upon my face ; " boss come ober into Leav- 
enworth, where he find me in de street. ' Come 
here, you damned nigger,' he say, pulling out his re- 
volver, and catching me by de neck. He got a boat 
all ready; den some people come up. 'You letdat 
nigger go alone,' say one ; ' Put a knife into de damned 
nigger,' say another. Den come a big row; dey fight 
for me all day ; and my side win." 

The date of this little history was six short years 
ago. Missouri, the fertile State beyond the river, the 
forests of which I have before me as I write, was then 
a slave State, with a sparse but fiery population of 
slave-breeders and slave-dealers. Nine years before 
that tim —that is to say, so late as 1851, when the 
world Wc gathering for its jubilee of progress in Hyde 
Park — a] this wide region, lying westward of the Mis- 
souri, frc .1 this river bank to the Rocky Mountains, 
was with ut a name. A host of wild Lidian tribes, 



20 ^^^W A3IERICA. 

Kansas, Chej^ennes, Arappahoes, hunted over the great 
j)lains; following the elk, the buffalo, the antelope, to- 
their secret haunts. Two great lines of travel had 
been cut through the prairies ; one leading southward 
to Santa Fd in New Mexico, the other running west- 
ward, by the Platte River, toward Salt Lake and San 
Francisco ; but the country was still an Indian hunt- 
ing-ground, in which the white man could not lawfully 
reside. Half a dozen forts had been thrown up by the 
Government in this Indian country — Fort Bent, Fort 
Laramie, Fort Leavenworth, Fort Calhoun, Old Fort 
— but rather with a view to guarding the red man's 
rights than to helping the white traveler and trader in 
their need. But while the people of all nations were 
assembling in Hyde Park, and wondering at the mag- 
nificent country which had even then to be represented 
by an empty space, a swarm of settlers crossed the 
Missouri on rafts and in canoes, seized upon the bluftk 
between Fort Calhoun and Fort Leavenworth, threw 
up camps of log-huts, staked out the finest patches o"^ 
land, especially those on the banks of creeks and 
pools, and so laid the foundation of what are now the 
populous and flourishing towns of Omaha, Nebraska, 
Atchison, and Leavenworth — cities of the free Terri- 
tory of Nebraska, of the free State of Kansas. 

Then commenced along the whole line of the Mis- 
souri River, that fitful, sanguinary strife, which earned 
for this region the mourning epithet of Bleeding Kan- 
sas. It lasted six years, and was a prelude to the Civil 
War. 

Lawrence and Leavenworth were the results of this 
battle, of which Sam's little story may be taken as a 
sample. 

Every one is aware that in the great feud between 
the free-soilers and the slaveholders of America, a 



BLEEDING KANSAS. 21 

truce had been made in 1820, wliicli is known in his- 
tory as the Missouri Compromise ; by which act it was 
arranged between the parties that slavery should never 
be introduced into any western region lying beyond 
36° 30' of north latitude, excepting into such portion 
of Missouri as happened to stand above that line. For 
thirty years that truce held good, and even when the 
war of freedom raged against slavery on other fields, 
the Missouri Compromise was respected in the "West. 
As the final conflict neared, the two parties in the 
struggle showed an equal discontent with that act of 
truce. The slaveowners in Missouri, having an excep- 
tional advantage in their State of settling with their 
slaves above the prohibited line, desired to carry their 
domestic institution straight backward through the 
country in their rear to the foot of the Rocky Mount- 
ains, even if they should not be able to carry it thence 
to the Pacific Ocean. All the South went with them 
in their plans, though their action was in open con- 
flict with the law. Secret societies sprang up in many 
States — Blue Lodges, Social Bands, Sons of the South, 
and many more, all pledged to aid these planters in 
carrying slavery westward of the Missouri River, in 
the teeth of their own compromise, in violation of 
their own truce. 

The slaveholders of Missouri won one victory with- 
out a shot, in quietly, by a local act, which attracted 
no attention either in Boston or in New York, extend- 
ing their own frontier westward, from the line drawn 
north and south through Kansas City, up to that of the 
river bank; adding six large and now populous coun- 
ties to their State, and consequently to the area of the 
slave empire. This act was absolutely illegal ; but no 
one in the eastern cities noted it until the bills effect- 
ing the change had become law, and the district had 



22 NEW AMERICA. 

been peopled with masters and their slaves. The game 
appeared to be wholly in their hands. From this new 
slave soil, which lies on the opposite bank, in front of 
my window, Blue Lodges, Social Bands, and Sons of 
the South streamed over into these Delaware reserves, 
into these Kansas hunting-grounds; each boss, accom- 
panied by his sons and his negroes, proceeding to help 
himself to the choicest lots. From St. Louis to New 
Orleans, their courage was applauded, their success 
predicted. In "Washington, the slave-dealing senators, 
instead of calling these Missourian planters to account, 
and carrying out the law against them, sustained them 
in this outrage on the free States. By a course of 
partisan agitations they procured a fresh compromise, 
in which it was agreed that the question of slavery 
should be referred back, generally, to the people of 
any unorganized country claiming to come within the 
Union either as a Territory or as a State. Such an act 
was supposed by the planters of Missouri and Ken- 
tucky to be an open declaration that Kansas and 'Ne- 
braska were to be organized as slave territories. But 
now New England came into the field. The conver- 
sion of Nebraska from free soil into slave soil, would 
have carried the line of slavery, in the western coun- 
try, as high north as Boston ! A Northern Emigrant 
Aid Society was founded in Massachusetts ; sturdy 
farmers, fervent professors, youthful poets, yoked 
horses to their wagons and pushed across the conti- 
nent toward the Missouri, sworn to settle on the new 
Lidian lands, to accept the compromise of Congress, 
and, in their quality of free citizens, to vote a free 
constitution for Kansas. The Blue Lodges were al- 
ready hutted at Leavenworth and Atchison ; and when 
the first New Englander crossed the stream, being un- 
able to answer these sentinels that he owned any nig- 



BLEEDING KANSAS. 23 

gers, they placed him in an open boat, without food, 
without oars, and sent him floating down the river 
amid derisive shouts and threats. A meeting of Sons 
of the South was called in Westport, on the Kansas 
border, but within the limits of Missouri, at which, 
after fiery eloquence, the following resolution was 
unanimously carried : 

" That this association will, whenever called upon 
by any of the citizens of Kansas Territory, hold itself 
in readiness together to assist and remove any and all 
immigrants who go there under the auspices of the 
Northern Emigrant Aid Society." 

The "Squatter Sovereign," a news sheet, published 
in the town of Atchison (founded and named by David 
Atch,ison, Senator of Missouri), put forth in an early 
number this declaration of the planters : 

"We will continue to lynch and hang, tar and 
feather, and drown any white-livered abolitionist who 
dares to pollute our soil." 

In July, 1854, thirty JSTew England free-soilers crossed 
the river in open boats; they were well armed, and 
brought with them tents and provisions. Pushing up 
the Kansas River, they rested at the foot of a tine bluif, 
in the midst of a rolling prairie, covered with flowers. 
Pitching their tents, and^ beginning to fell wood for 
shanties, they called the place at which they camped 
the City of Lawrence, from the name of their popular 
purse-holder. In August, they were joined by seventy 
more, men, like themselves, well armed and resolute, 
prepared to found that city and to free that soil. Isow 
had arrived the time for the Missouri men to show 
their spirit; a hundred Yankees, separated from their 
friends by six great States, had come into their midst, 
daring them to carry out their threat of either hang- 
ing, lynching, or drowning every one who should cross 



24 NEW A ME BIG A. 

luto Kansas without a negro slave in his train. Three 
hundred and fifty Sons of the South took horse, dashed 
over the shallow stream, and, having early in the morn- 
ing formed a camp and thrown out pickets, sent word 
into Lawrence that these new settlers must quit the 
Territory, promising never to return. Three hours 
were given the free-soilers in which to pack their 
things and get ready to march. A Yankee hugle sum- 
moned the immigrants to arms; a civil but decisive 
answer was returned to the Missouri camp ; and when 
the Sons of the South perceived that the Yankees 
were ready for the fray, and would be likely to fight it 
out so long as a man could hold his piece, they began 
to suspect each other, to doubt the goodness of their 
carbines, and to steal away. Dusk found their camp 
much thinned ; dawn found it broken up and gone. 

From that day Lawrence has grown and prospered. 
More than once it has fallen into Missourian hands, and 
the marks of grape and canister are seen upon some of 
its buildings ; but its free-soil people have never been 
driven out, and it is now a charming little city, with 
the brightness of a ]^ew England town. It is the cap- 
ital of a free State. 

In these streets of Leavenworth many a fierce battle 
has been fought ; the Sons of the South living close at 
hand, in a score of villages on yon wooded banks. 
Blood has been shed in almost every lane, especially 
at the voting times, when thousands of the Missou- 
rians used to come across in boats, take possession of 
the polling-booths, and return an overwhelming but 
fictitious majority in favor of a slave constitution. One 
good citizen, William Philhps, an advocate, was seized 
by Sons of the South for having signed a protest, as 
a lawyer, against the frauds which had disgraced the 
election; was forced into a boat and pulled up the 



BLEEDING KANSAS. 25 

river to Weston, on the Missouri side, where he was 
first tarred and feathered, then ridden on a rail, after- 
ward put up to auction as a slave, and finally knocked 
down, amid frantic yells and menaces, to a negro- 
buyer. On his escape from Weston, Phillips returned 
to Leavenworth, resolute in his free-soil faith, and 
ready for the post of danger in every fray. 

In another week from this date, it will be just ten 
years since a gang of Blue Lodges started from the 
opposite bank, landed on this levde, took possession of 
the town, which lay completely at their mere}' for many 
hours, and under pretense of searching for arms — an 
utterly illegal search on their part — plundered and in- 
sulted the free-soilers in every house. Phillips refused 
to allow these fellows to come inside his door, on which 
the house was attacked and its owner killed. Before 
he fell, Phillips had shot two of his assailants dead. 
His house was burned to the ground, along with many 
other dwellings ; and every free-soiler who could be 
found in Leavenworth was put on board a steamer 
and sent down the river. 

Yet the New Englauders rallied to their flag, with 
growing numbers and glowing passions, becoming 
genuine settlers on the land, which the Missouri men 
were not. Here, and elsewhere, it has been shown 
that slavery, as a social system, lacked the solid fiber 
of a colonizing power. Slaves could not work the 
prairie land to profit; negroes, toiling under a master's 
eye and whip, required the rich soils of Mississippi 
and Alabama. With a pistol in one hand, a hoe in 
the other, these stout New Hampshire and Massa- 
chusetts lads fought on, toiled on, not only until they 
had gained a fair majority in the ballot-boxes, but won 
a full ascendency in the open field. 

One of the comic incidents of this war was the bat- 
3 



26 NEW AMERICA. 

tie of Black Jack, when Captain Clay Pate (ominous 
name!), a Virginian, who gave himself airs as a pro- 
fessional soldier, put himself at the head of fifty-six 
Sons of the South, and threatened to eat up old John 
Brown, of Osawatomie (afterward, unhappily, of Har- 
per's Ferry), and his band of twenty-seven frce-soilers. 
Pate had organized his force like a little army, with 
its horse and foot, its camp equipage, and its luggage 
train; and having just then been plundering Palmyra, 
a free-soil city, his baggage mules were heavily laden 
with the spoils of war. Brown made a fair tight by 
going out into the open plains. After a lusty tug, Clay 
Pate surrendered to the tough old fellow — himself, 
with his sword, his luggage train, all the spoils of Pal- 
myra, twenty-one hale men, the whole of his dead and 
wounded, and his gorgeous tent. 

In 1861, a few months after these citizens of Leav- 
enworth had fought the battle for my friend Sam on 
this levee under my windows, the wounds of bleeding 
Kansas were stanched and healed by her admission 
into the Union as a iVec State. 



OVERLAND MAIL. 27 



CHAPTER III. 

OVERLAND MAIL. 

The Overland Mail is one of the many great facts 
of the Great Republic. The postal returns tell you 
how many, you can imagine how important, are the 
letters going westward from the Atlantic cities to the 
Pacific cities. This mail is an Imperial institution. 

While we were yet in London, dreaming of the de- 
tails of our trip to the Rocky Mountains, it was always 
comforting to know that in going out among the wild 
Cheyennes and Sioux, we should find ourselves traveling 
in company with the Imperial Mail. Glancing at maps, 
scanning the vast spaces over which Cheyenne, Sioux, 
Comanche, and Arappahoe roam, one is apt to think 
there may lurk some spice of danger in such a journey; 
but then comes in the assuring thought that all along 
this route across the Prairies, across the Mountains, the 
American mails are being daily sent under powerful 
escorts of mounted men. Magic lies in this word 
"daily." That which is daily done must be safely 
done. Would he not be considered a sorry fellow who 
should fear to travel, even along a road infested by 
Sioux and rattlesnakes, under escort of United States 
troops in company with the Imperial Mail? When 
Speaker Colfax drove across the Plains last fall, to 
study the Indian question, the Mining question, and 
the Mormon question, among living Indians, Miners, 
and Mormons, instead of reading about them in govern- 
ment reports, he had only one general officer, one 
colonel, and twenty-four uabers galloping round his 



28 NEW AMERICA. 

coach; yet he has publicly coMfessecl that — although 
the redsldus frightened him a little, and delayed his 
journey much, by plundering the stations in his front, 
and threatening every moment to have his scalp — he 
got safely through to Denver and Salt Lake. 

Colfax, it is true, was a State official, and besides 
having his escort, he had also with him a considerable 
party of well-armed men. We are strangers, only two 
in number (so far as we can see); we are but slightly 
armed Avith Colts — since we have all along been dream- 
ing, that if any fighting is to be done, it will be the 
work of our gallant escort, riding by our sides in de- 
fense of the Imperial Mail. 

At Leavenworth we find the mail-agents, to whom 
we have letters from their chief in New York — as we 
have to every one employed by the Overland Mail 
Company along these tracks. Nothing can be more 
polite, more teasing, than their answers to our ques- 
tions. Everything shall be done for us that can be, 
under the circumstances. We have come at an un- 
lucky time. If we had only started a month sooner — 
if we had only stayed a month later — all would have 
been right. As it is, they will do their best; we may 
find things a little rough in the plains, but the agents 
have hardly any doubt that w^e shall get through to our 
journey's end. 

Such words rather pique our ftmcies; since our 
health, our comfort, nay our lives, depend on the state 
of these plains. The ifact is, the old road by way of 
the Platte Eiver has been changed, by order of Con- 
gress, for a shorter cut through the vast Indian region 
of the Smoky Hill Fork; a shorter course, perhaps a 
better one, if the road had only first been made, bridged, 
and leveled ; and if the Indian tribes who hunt buftalo 
and antelope across it had been either driven away or 



OVERLAND MAIL. 29 

negotiated into peace. None of tliese tilings have yet 
been done. 

Two great lines of travel have been driven by the 
white men through these plains: (1) the Platte road 
from Omaha and Atchison, by way of Kearney, Denver, 
and Salt Lake City, to San Francisco; (2) the Arkansas 
route, starting from Kansas City, and running by Fort 
Atkinson and Fort Wise to Puebla, the gold regions 
of Colorado, and thence to San Francisco. To the ex- 
istence of these two roads the Indians seem to have 
submitted in despair. To the Platte road, they have 
ceased to show any strong opposition; having fought 
for it and lost it; iirst to the Mormon pilgrims, after- 
ward to the gold-seekers, men who came into their 
country, driving before them trains of wagons, in bands 
of eighty or a hundred, and being armed with rifles 
and revolvers. To the Arkansas road, they nurse a 
sharper antipathy; since it is mainly a trial road, the 
right to travel over which has been purchased from 
their chiefs. Still, though it may be with a bad grace, 
and with many murmurs and protests, they have shown, 
and they still show, themselves ready to respect the 
white man as he passes through their lands by either 
of these two routes^ But in the vast prairies between 
these tracks lie the great buffalo-runs, with the pas- 
tures feeding nearly all that remains in the Indian 
territories of the elk, the antelope, and the black- 
tailed deer. The buffalo-runs are also theirs, say the 
Cheyennes and the Arappahoes, and they must either 
keep them free from whites or else die like dogs. 
They say they will not die before the pale-faces; there- 
fore, they must keep the buffalo-runs of Kansas and 
Colorado (as the white men have begun to call the 
plains — on paper) free from intrusion of mail and 
train. 

3* 



30 NEW AMERICA 

J^ow the new route chosen by Congress for the 
Overhmd Mail, beyond all question a shorter line from 
St. Louis to San Francisco, cuts these buftalo-runs, 
these elk and antelope pastures, into two halves, and, 
as the Cheyennes and their allies, the Comanches, 
Arappahoes, Kiowas, Sioux, and Appaches, know very 
well, a railway is being built in the rear of this new 
mail; a railway which has already reached Wamego, 
near Fort liilej'. Now the red men, knowing that the 
Mail is only a herald of much worse, and that the rail- 
way bell will quickly follow the crack of a driver's 
whip, have called a counsel of their tribes, and some 
say have concluded to try war against the whites for 
the possession of these buffalo-runs. When a railway 
engine, say the braves, shall have whistled away buftalo 
and antelope, it will be idle to raise the hatchet and 
draw the bow. N^ow is the time for them to strike ; 
now or never; and, even if a few of the old men, gray 
with years and sad with sorrow, should recommend 
peace with their white neighbors, resignation to the 
will of their Great Spirit, the young braves, proud of 
their own strength, ignorant of the white men's num- 
bers and resources, are said to be all for war. If the 
pale-face will not come into the bulfalo-runs, they will 
keep the peace; if he will build his ranch, dig his well, 
and crop his grass, in these runs, the Cheyenne and 
the Arappahoes, aided by their brethren of the prairie 
and the hill country, will burn his shanty and take his 
scalp. 

Such are the rumors that we hear from every mouth 
in Kansas. A small party, it is true, affects to regard 
the alarm of Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Wamego, 
as a panic having little or no foundation; partisans of 
the new route by way of Smoky Hill Fork, who wish 
to see it opened and kept open. They are few in num- 



OVERLAND MAIL. 31 

ber; and I do not hear tliat any of these heroes propose 
to settle, as yet, along the line of road though the 
Cheyenne country. 

N^ow, as we gather from the mail-agents in Leaven- 
worth, this is the line along which we are to go a 
journey of thirteen hundred miles; through a country 
the greater part of which has never been surveyed, 
through which there is no road, in which there are 
many streams and gullies, but not a single bridge; a 
country in which the hills, the creeks, the rivers, have 
as yet received no names, and in which the small mili- 
tary posts of the United States, themselves only corrals 
of logs and planks, lie two hundred miles apart. 

Still, a line along which a mail so magnificent as 
that sent oft' from New York to San Francisco, not to 
speak of the thousand inferior cities which help to feed 
it, has been running its daily course, must be at least 
as safe as the line from Damascus to Banias. But on 
our saying this, or something like this, to a friend in 
Leavenworth, we learn, to our surprise, that there has 
never been a daily mail running along that line; that 
no such thing has ever yet been attempted; that there 
are neither men nor mules alorjg the road to carry a 
daily mail; that, in point of fact, only one wagon, an 
empty wagon, has gone out in advance of us; that no 
one knows where that empty wagon is, or whether it 
will arrive in safety beyond tlie plains. 

We look at our pistols, and feel the hair on our 
polls ; the aspect of aftairs is at once tragic and comic ; 
and the kindly jokes of our friends in Pall Mall, as to 
the best way of enjoying a scalping-knife, are coming 
rather near and hot. We find, too, that we are the 
only passengers booked for the trip; so that the num- 
ber of revolvers coming into play, in case of a scrim- 
mage with the Cheyennes and Comanches, in aid of the 



32 NEW AMERICA. 

military escort, seems to be reduced to two. All our 
acquaintance in this city urge us to get more and better 
arms ; a suggestion in which the mail-agents cordially 
agree. The new arm of the West, called a Smith and 
Weston, is a pretty tool; as neat a machine for throw- 
ing slugs into a man's flesh as an artist in murder could 
desire to see. Bowie-knives, and such like, being use- 
less to a Britisher who may have seen, but never prac- 
ticed, the art of ripping up an adversary's side, like a 
Livornese and a Valentian, we buy a couple of these 
Smith and Westons, and then pay our fare of five hun- 
dred dollars to Salt Lake. An escort of veterans from 
the Potomac, aided by these six-shooters, will surely 
scare away all the Cheyennes, Arappahoes, and Sioux, 
who may be found clamoring about the rights of man, 
especially about the rights of red men, in the buffalo- 
runs. 

The rail has been laid down so far west as Wamego 
— the Clear Springs — so called from the fact of there 
being no water in the village; and there we are to join 
the stage for our long ride; the stage being an old and 
much-worn Concord coach; a vehicle unknown in 
Europe, though its shapelessness and inconvenience 
might be hinted by cutting ofl:' the coupd of a French 
diligence, and bellying out the rotundo, until it could 
be supposed by its proprietor big enough to hold nine 
persons. This coach, when we come to it, is jammed 
full of mail-bags — forty- two hundredweight in all — 
State dispatches, love-letters, orders, bills of exchange, 
invoices of account, all sorts of lively and deadly mis- 
siles, the value of which to governor, maid, clerk, 
banker, emigrant, and dealer must be far beyond 
price; and here are five passengers on the books to 
take their chances of the road (three of them being a 
young woman and two babies), who, having duly paid 



OVERLAND MAIL. 83 

their fares and got their tickets, have a right to be 
taken on. But this going on is a thing impossible, as a 
glance at the coach and the mail-bags tells the experi- 
enced eye of the Warn ego agent. What shall be done? 
The mail must go, even though the passengers should 
have to wait in Wamego for a month; and as the 
driver is already cracking his whip, and belching out 
volleys of oaths, which the lady and her two babies 
are obliged to hear (poor things !), the agent quickly 
makes up his mind, bids us get aboard — men and 
revolvers — says one sharp word to the driver, when 
away we plunge into the dust, leaving our female 
fellow-traveler, astonished, protesting, in the cloud of , 
mud and sand. We look at each other wonderingly; 
for in this Paradise of Women, a petticoat is accus- 
tomed to carry all things before it — the best room at 
a hotel, the highest place at table, the first seat in a 
coach, in spite of your prior right. Ha! the revolvers 
have done it. As we are dashing off, we look out of 
window for the troops who are to be our companions 
in the Cheyenne country. None are in sight! "The 
escort," says the agent, "will join you at Junction 
City, if there should seem to be any need; you must 
consider the mail as starting from Junction City;" and 
as he courteously waves his hand, we roll away into 
the dust. 

In a couple of hours we pass Fort Riley; in two or 
three more we are at Junction City; a city of six 
wooden shanties, where we alight to sup off hot cake, 
tea, and tomatoes; and about an hour later, in the 
midst of a pleasant chat with the landlord of our hos- 
telry, we hear the driver's cry, "On board!" Rushing 
out into the night, our belts swung round us, our pis- 
tols loaded for the fray, we find that our big Concoro 
coach has been exchanged for a light prairie wagon, 



34 NEW AMERICA. 

smaller in size, frailer in build, without a door, with 
very bad springs, and with canvas blinds for windows. 
Into this wagon, the letter-bags have been forced by 
an ingenious violence, the art of which is only known 
in the Western country, with so neat a finish that it 
would seem impossible to insert two human beings 
between the mail-bags and the wall. But, in time, by 
doubling our legs across each other, by craning our 
necks, by slinging our elbows into straps, the feat is 
accomphshed; the two human beings aforenamed 
having been persuaded, much against their grain, to 
wriggle themselves between the bags, under a promise 
that the said bags will shake down in a few minutes 
so as to give plenty of room. This is not easy, we 
suggest to each other, since we have our own small 
litter of pistols, books, maps, brandy-flasks, shawls, 
night-caps, potted meats, cigar-cases, sticks, umbrellas, 
and the like, about our feet. We begin to fear, that 
unless the load shall happen to shake down considera- 
bly, we may chance to have a bad week of it. 

But see, this fellow is about to start, though the 
escort is not in sight! 

Whew! We speak to the agent: "Well," says he, 
in effect, "the officer in charge will not lend us any 
troops; his command is very low just now; the 
country is disturbed by Indians in his front and flank; 
he has enough to do to hold his own in the post. 
But," the good-natured agent adds, for our comfort, 
"you will find the road all right; some troops went 
up the plains yesterday; you will pass them ahead; 
good-by!" And we are off. 

The truth now flashes on our minds like a revela- 
tion: 

We are the escort! 

Kot a soul goes out with the mail, either now or 



OVERLAND MAIL. 35 

through the journey, except the boy who drives the 
mnles (changed every forty or fifty miles on the road); 
no escort, no mail-agent, nobody save ourselves. I 
cannot say that in my travels I have ever seen the 
fellow of this prairie mail. In the most dangerous 
district crossed by traveler and trader west of Chinese 
Tartary, the ISTew York and St. Louis people trust the 
most important mail leaving any city in the world 
excepting that from London, without a guard. 'Bo 
one doubts that the Cheyennes and Sioux are now 
holding council on these plains, even if they have not 
as yet gone out upon the war-path; nay, that they 
have given notice, after their Indian manner, of an 
intention to stop the road; yet, the mail is going into 
their buffalo-runs, in spite of all warnings, without a 
single guard, even such an old fogie as used to 
blow his horn and shoulder his blunderbuss on 
Hounslow Heath. 

Perhaps I am forgetting the confidence which they 
place in their English guard. They know that we are 
armed; they feel a reasonable certainty that we know 
how to use our tools. "The road is a little rough," 
says one of the stock-keepers as we roll from his 
station into the black midnight and the unknown 
prairie; "but the Government will do nothing for us, 
until it has been roused by a great disaster; they care 
nothing for a few lives, especially for the lives of poor 
teamsters and drivers." One passing friend rather 
hopes that we may be scalped, as he thinks that such 
an event might create a pleasant and profitable sensa- 
tion in ]^ew York. 

We have paid five hundred dollars for escorting the 
United States mail to Salt Lake. It is a high price, 
but the privilege might be worth the cost, if we had a 
mind to use the facilities which fall about our feet and 



36 NEW AMERICA. 

court us to see tliem. This mail is wholly at our 
mercy. Six nights and days we are shut up with our 
pistols and the United States correspondence ; our sole 
companion being the boy outside, who cannot see into 
the wagon when the flaps are down. In one place a 
bag falls out of the wagon, and would certainly be left 
behind on the plain, but that we call the driver to stop 
and pick it up. In another place one of the bags 
bursts open, when a stream of letters comes flowing 
about our feet. We have only to help ourselves ; read 
what we like, pocket what we like. Might not the 
secrets of a single letter be worth, in some hands, 
more than the five hundred dollars we have paid to 
guard them ? 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PRAIRIES. 

Of all the States and Territories which still exist on 
paper, Kansas may be described as the Prairie State. 
Nebraska, Colorado, and the Indian territory are cov- 
ered by prairies; great grassy plains, not level, as 
many persons think, but rolhng uplands, rising from 
the river to the mountains in a series of ascending bil- 
lows, always of gentle grade, often of enormous sweep. 
But Kansas is beyond dispute the region in which 
these plains display themselves on the largest scale, 
and with their points most perfect. 

On the old maps, which show the natural history of 
each section of the Great Republic, the district now 



THE PRAIRIES. 37 

called Kansas will be found figured Dy a buffalo, as 
Nebraska is marked by an antelope, Iowa by a beaver, 
Utah by a bear. Across these plains, up from the 
Indian territory on the south, come the wild and mul- 
titudinous herds on which the Cheyennes, the Arappa- 
hoes, the Comanches, and the Kiowas feed. 

For two hundred miles westward from the Missouri, 
the plains are green with trees, most of all so along 
the lines of the Kansas River and its many creeks and 
inlets. The wood is hickory, walnut, oak, and water- 
elm. Maple and chestnut are not found in the plains. 
The land is alive with shrubs and flowers; among 
which flourish wild marigolds, shamrock, water-lily (in 
the pools), rosin-weed, stink-weed, and sunflowers. 
These sunflowers of the West are not the tawny gauds 
of our cottage gardens; big and brazen bachelors, 
flourishing on a single stock; but little golden flowers, 
clustering in bunches, and, like our buttercups, num- 
berless as the stars of heaven. In many parts, the 
prairie is alive with their golden light. A white frame 
house — on this side of the river called a ranch — peeps 
out here and there from beneath the foliage, having its 
green blinds, its bit of garden, its sheep-fold. Herds 
of horses can be seen on the rolling plateau. Here 
you have a drove of cattle, there a long wagon train. 
Anon we pass an Indian village, where some families 
of Delawares, sent out from those Atlantic forests 
now occupied by the quays and palaces of Dover, 
Baltimore, and Philadelphia, have taken a fitful and 
precarious root in the soil. These Delawares have 
long since buried the hatchet, put on pantaloons, for- 
gotten the use of war-paint. Some of them make 
farmers; living on friendly terms with their pale 
neighbors; even marrying their sons into tne families 
of whites. We pass a Shawnee village, of which the 
4 



38 NEW ABIE RIG A. 

feame things may be said. White men's ranches stand 
among them; dangerous neighbors to these natives; 
for the pale-face, finding his way through the cracks 
and crannies of Indian character, making himself first 
useful, then formidable, to the tribe, commonly ends 
the connection with them by becoming lord and owner 
of their lands. 

The air is warm and sweet; a perfume of prairie 
flowers mingling with the distant snows of the sierras. 
The sky is intensely blue, with none of that golden 
haze which frets the eye in our own southern land- 
scapes. A patch of cloud, intense and vivid in its 
whiteness, dots and relieves the grand monotony of 
azure, so as to combine in one field of view the dis- 
tinctive beauties of a Sicilian and an English sky. 

As we draw away from the river, the woodland 
scenery disappears ; the country opens to the right and 
left; the plains swell languidly into greater breadths 
of upland. About the creeks and pools, for the most 
part dry on the surface, there are still some shrubs ; 
the wild convolvulus is common ; also the Virginian 
creeper; more than all others, a plant called the rosin- 
weed. This rosin-weed appears to be Nature's choice 
in the way of verdure and adornment. When the 
ground is either cleared by fire, or cut by the prairie 
breaker, the rosin-weed disappears; the fire-weed 
springs up in its place, and dies in its turn after two 
or three crops, in some places after one crop ; when 
this second weed is succeeded by the tickle-grass. 
(P. S. — Don't let the tickle-grass get up your legs — for 
it seems to be alive; to know you don't like it — and to 
creep up your pantaloons the faster you fret and 
worry.') After this grass come three or four species of 
wild grasses ; and after these fertilizers sown by In a- 
ture have dropped their decaying blades into the 



THE PRAIRIES. 39 

ground, the farmer may come with his rake and his 
seed to a soil made ready for his use. 

Driving on night and day (as men must drive who 
have charge of an imperial mail), we begin to leave 
all trace of man and his arts, save one, behind. A 
prairie hen clucks in the wild sage; a rattlesnake coils 
among the sunflowers ; a wolf steals noiselessly along 
the road ; dead mules, dead horses, dead oxen, strew 
the path, on which the carrion-crow, the raven, and 
the wolf, find food ; these white horns and skeletons 
of man's servants being often the only traces of his 
ever having found his way across the plains. 

By daring ingenuity and patience, the Western 
trader has pushed a way for hims.elf across this diffi- 
cult trail of land; making an opening for trade and 
travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He 
has done this feat as a private man, without help from 
the State, without cheers from any learned body, at a 
cost of blood and money which can never be counted 
upon earth ; and for this reason ; the Western man 
thinks nothing of blood, not much of treasure, when 
he regards them as being invested in a business that 
Mnll pay. Holding his life in his hand, this reckless, 
jovial fellow, swearing overmuch, brimming with help 
when help is of use, is careless of blood — either his 
own or yours — far beyond an Arab, almost beyond a 
Chinese. This path through the prairie has been 
paved by him, again and again, with bones; but the 
trace of his passage, of his suflering, dies away out of 
sight with the autumnal flowers. Nature is here too 
strong for man to do more than throw a trail upon her 
landscape, which may show itself for a day in the 
bunch-grass, among the gray sand, and then vanish 
from sight like the track of a ship at sea. The prairie 
is not man's home. Even if he had time to plant and 



40 NEW AMERICA. 

reap it, lie could hardly grow a blade of grass, a stalk 
of Indian-corn, on these open flats, where myriads of 
locusts clatter through the air, devouring in their hun- 
ger every green leaf and twig. We ride past a lonely 
ranch, near which the daring and hopeful tenant had 
planted a field with cOrn, for his winter food. Look at 
the poor man's harvest ! Legions of locusts are upon 
his crop; and every ear that should have made him 
bread has been picked away. 

In these uplands, Nature is lord and king. Snipes 
and plovers abound; blackbirds, carrion-crows, ravens, 
and vultures are also seen. Flowers are still common; 
most of all, the dwarf sunflower, which is sown so 
thickly through the landscape as to give it a shimmer 
of burning gold. The dwarf sunflower is, in fact, the 
prairie flower; lighting up the face of JSTature every- 
where in our route, from the Missouri River to the 
Great Salt Lake; in some parts growing low and 
stunted, the stalk not a foot long, the flower not 
higher than a common marigold, in others rising ten 
or twelve feet high, with clusters of flowers each as big 
as a peony. Ants are toiling in the ground ; the little 
prairie dogs — comedians of the waste — sit crowing on 
their mounds of earth, until we drive close up to them, 
when they utter a quick laugh, and with a shout of 
mockery plunge into their holes head downward, dis- 
appearing from our sight with a last merry wag of 
their tails. Owls, prairie-dogs, and rattlesnakes live on 
the most friendly terms with each other; the owls and 
snakes dwelling in the prairie-dogs' holes, and some- 
times, I fancy, eating the dogs when they happen to 
be short of food. It may only be a superstition ; but 
the teamsters and drivers across the plains have a fixed 
belief that flesh of the prairie-dog is poisonous in a 
peculiar way, and that men who eat of it become in- 



THE PRAIRIES. 41 

sane. Once, in a stress of hunger, I was obliged to 
kill one. 

" Lord !" cries the boy at the ranch, " you will never 
eat that, sir?" 

" Why not ? I am hungry enough to eat a Chey- 
enne." 

"Well, sir," says the lad, "we prairie folks consider 
the owl, the rattlesnake, and the prairie-dog to be all 
of a kith and kin, the Devil's own spawn, and that 
anybody who eats them will go mad." 

"Put him in the pan; I must take my chance." 
The flesh proved to be delicious, with something like 
the taste of squirrel;, and on seeing me suck the 
savory bone, the prairie-boy instantly seized and de- 
voured a leg. I hope the teamsters and drivers will 
continue in their want of faith as to the wholesome- 
ness of prairie-dogs; for the antics of these little ani- 
mals should make them dear to every man who has to 
cross these plains, in which the supply of comedy is 
extremely scant. 

After passing Fort Ellsworth — a collection of wooden 
shanties, in which lie a hundred men, not very well 
armed (we hear), and careful to keep their feet within 
bounds, leaving the Cheyennes and Arappahoes alone 
— we have before us a stretch of two hundred and 
twenty miles of dangerous country, without a single 
post for its protection ; a country in which there is no 
town, no camp, no ranch, except the log stables, now 
being built for the overland mules. We are alone 
with Nature and the imperial mail. Around us, we 
have many signs that the Cheyennes and Arappahoes 
are hovering nigh ; at times we catch visible evidence 
of a scout on some distant ridge of the Smoky Hill, 
and see the curl of blue smoke from some neighboring 

creek. 

4* 



42 NEW AMERICA. 

We are now between Big Creek and Big Timber 
Station, in the very heart of the wild game country ; 
a country of long, low, rolling hills, covered with a 
short sweet grass — bunch-grass — on which the butfalo 
loves to feed. We have ceased firing at rattlesnakes 
and prairie chickens; reserving our cartridges for the 
nobler uses of self-defense ; though we are tempted, 
now and then, to try a shot at some elk, or antelope, 
or black-tailed deer. The great game being buffaloes, 
against the tough hides of which our small six-shooters 
are of no avail, we sit quietly in our wagon watching 
the herds troop by; in lines, in companies, in droves, 
in armies, the black and shaggy beasts go thundering 
in our front; sometimes from north to south, some- 
times from south to north ; but always scudding in 
our front, and alwa3'8 across our line of march. The 
plains are teeming with life; most of all with buffalo 
bulls and cows. For forty hours we have now had 
tliem always in our sight; thousands on thousands, 
tens of thousands after tens of thousands ; a countless 
host of untamed animals; all of them fit for human 
food ; enough, we should think, to stock Arappahoe, 
Comanche, and Cheyenne wigwams to the end of time. 
Once or twice the driver tries a shot ; but fear of the 
red-skins commonly checks his wish to fire. 

This buffalo, which is the white man's sport, is also 
the red man's food ; and a Cheyenne warrior cannot 
be made to see why a pale-face should come into his 
country and destroy the buffalo for the sake of a little 
amusement. A white man who has to kill buffalo to 
live, the Indian can comprehend, though he may have 
to suffer in estate by that white man's rifle; but a man 
who shoots buffalo for sport, having no wish to eat it, 
is a mystery of conduct to which any reel-skin would 
gladly put an end by tomahawk and scalping-knife. 



THE PRAIRIES. 43 

As we ascend the plains, a series of rolling steppes, 
iu no part level for a dozen miles, the sun grows 
fiercer overhead, the sands hotter beneath our feet. 
Snakes, lizards, locusts, swarm on the ground and in 
the air ; the heat of noon is terrible ; sometimes, in 
the breathless noon, reminding me of the Jordan val- 
ley. "Water is scarce and bad, and the dry, hot fever 
of external nature creeps into and corrupts your 
blood. 

The fourth day of our journey on the plains is one 
of tropical warmth. That short, sweet grass on which 
the buftalo loves to feed, is now behind us in the lower 
plains, where moisture, though it may be scant, is not 
unknown, as it seems to be here for many a league on 
league. Our path is strewn with skeletons of oxen, 
mules, and horses; waste of the life that helps to keep 
up an overland trade from the river to the sea. Ravens 
and wolves are seen fattening on these remains of mule 
and ox; tame enough to be hardly scared from their 
meal by the crashing of our wagon wheels through the 
burning sand. A golden haze, the effect of heat, en- 
velops the earth, and the mirage tantalizes our parch- 
ing throats with a promise of water, — never to be 
reached. A stillness as of death is round about us. 
In the west we see a little cloud, not bigger when we 
see it first, than a prairie-dog; anon it is the size of a 
fox, of a buftalo, of a mountain; in a few minutes it 
has covered the sky with one black and sulphurous 
pall, out of which the lightnings begin to leap and 
dance. 

A fiash comes through the still and silent air, like a 
gunshot, suddenly, with a sharp surprise. It is followed 
by a wail of wind and rain, which lifts the sand from 
the ground into the air, and drives it into the canvas 
flaps of our mountain wagon, splasliing us with mud 



44 NEW A3IERICA. 

and mire. No care can keep the deluge out; and in a 
few minutes we are drenclied and smothered. Four or 
live hours that storm of sand and rain drives heavily 
against us. Two or three times the mules stand still 
in fear; turn their backs to the heavenly fire, refusing 
to go forward under any encouragement of either voice 
or whip. Were they not fastened to the coach, they 
would fly before the tempest; bolting for their lives 
until the hurricane should have drooped and died. 
Being chained to the wagon, they can only stand and 
moan. "When the storm is spent, the stars come peep- 
ing out; the air is chill and sweet; and we drag our 
way along the wet and smoking plain. 

Want of sleep, want of food, want of exercise — or 
we are jolted over the unmade tracks all night, all day, 
stopping at the creeks for a little water, at the log- 
stables for the change of mules, but a few moments 
only — have made us ill. We obtain no proper supplies 
of food and drink, and we are cooped up in a wagon 
designed (one might suppose) by some infernal genius 
as a place of torture; a machine in which you can 
neither sit, nor stand, nor lie down. My friend is suf- 
fering from bilious sickness; I am tormented by erup- 
tions on the skin ; yet, even with these quick monitors 
of evil in us, we are every day astonished by the sud- 
den gush of life, which comes with the morning light. 
We crawl from our miserable den — a den without a 
door, without a window, without a step — with nothing 
save a coarse convas cover for a roof, coarse canvas 
flaps for sides, — into the dust and filth of a stable; 
banged and beaten and jolted, until our heads are 
swollen, our faces bruised, our hands lacerated; sleep- 
less, hungry; our temples racked by pain, our nostrils 
choked with sand, our limbs stiftened and bent with 
cramps; but after rinsing our mouths and dipping our 



PRAIRIE INDIANS. 45 

heads in some little creek, the water of which we dare 
not drink, and pushing on three or four miles ahead 
of the stage, winding up the long prairie swells, and 
breathing the morning air, we pause in our brisk step, 
look at each other, and smile. The effect is magical ; 
all pain, all cramp, all languor, have disappeared ; the 
blood flows freely, the lungs act softly, the nostrils 
seem to open from within, and the eyes appear to cast 
out sand and dust by some internal force. If we could 
only now get food, we feel strength enough to defy all 
other forms of pain. 

But food is a thing we cannot get. 



CHAPTER V. 

PRAIRIE INDIANS. 

The red men of these prairies have been taking 
counsel together in a field near Fort Ellsworth, as to 
the policy of allowing the white men, headed by their 
Big Father in Washington, to open a new road through 
their country by way of this Smoky Hill Fork; and the 
warlike tribes of this region, the Cheyennes, and 
Arappahoes, aided and supported by allies from the 
South and from the JSTorth, the powerful Sioux, the 
savage Kiowas, the clever Comanches, and the swift 
Apaches, are said to have resolved on war. 

These Indians say they have been deceived by the 
white men ; this they always say when going out on 
the war-path; for a red man's pride will not suffer him 



46 NEW AMEBIC A. ' 

to acknowledge, even to himself, that he has done any 
wrong — that he has broken any pledge. In these 
frontier quarrels, the Indian, by his' own confession, is 
always right. So far as we can learn from these 
Cheyennes and their allies, it would seem that early in 
the spring of this present year (1866) Major Wyncoop, 
an officer of Government, employed in the task of 
making treaties — a brisk and profitable branch of the 
public service — had been among these prairie hunters, 
giving them arms and blankets, flour and whisky, in 
exchange for a promise of good behavior on the roads 
in respect to emigrant wagons and merchants' trains. 
Wyncoop, they say, had told them, byword of mouth, 
to have no fears about the safety of their baffiilo-runs, 
since the Big Father in Washington had no intention 
of opening any new road by way of the Smoky Hill. 
After Wyncoop left them, they began to fear that he 
had been a bearer of lies ; for they heard that, even 
while he was sleeping in their lodge, eating elk with 
Roman ITose, Black Hawk, and Spotted Bog, Cheyenne 
chiefs and warriors, the white men had been laying 
their plans for cutting a road straight toward the heart 
of these buffiilo lands. 

Of course they have heard from the pale-faces that 
all roads should be free and open. They have been 
told that the road from St. Louis to l^ew York is just 
as free to a red man as to a white man; and they have 
been also told, as though this second thing followed 
from the first, that the path from St, Louis to Salt 
Lake should be as free to the white man as it is to the 
red; but Roman [Rose, Black Hawk, and Spotted Bog 
are men too subtle to be taken in by what they call 
baby-talk. They answer, that in their sense of the 
word yon road from St. Louis to ISTew York is not 
open. Would Black Hawk be allowed to hunt through 



PRAIRIE INDIANS. 47 

the fields of Ohio? Would Spotted Dog be suffered to 
pitch his lodge in the streets of Indianapolis? Could 
Roman Nose, on that road from St. Louis to New York, 
kill and eat sheep and cow, animals which have re- 
placed his own buffalo and elk? If not, how, they ask, 
can the track be called open to them, dwellers in wig- 
wams, hunters of wild game? These Cheyennes, these 
Arappahoes and Sioux, are as well aware as any pale- 
face in Washington, that their laws are not our laws, 
their liberties not our liberties. If it were one of their 
Indian fashions to have a party-cry, they would prob- 
ably raise the shout of "The hunting-ground for the 
hunter!" 

Roman Nose and Spotted Dog tell us that the very 
best hunting-grounds now left to the red man are these 
prairie lands, lying along and around the Smoky Hill 
Fork; a dry and sandy ravine, more than a hundred 
miles in length, stretching at the foot of this high ridge 
or bluff', called Smoky Hill from the cap of mist which 
commonly floats above its crest. Here grow the sweet 
bunch-grasses which the buffalo loves to chew, and 
hither come those herds of game on which the Indian 
lodge depends for its winter store. Disturb these herds 
in their present quarters, and whither can they flee? 
Southward lies the Arkansas road from St. Louis to 
Santa Fd; northward lies the Platte road from Omaha 
to Salt Lake. No game will linger on the white man's 
track ; and to make a path for the mail by way of Smoky 
Hill Fork is simply to drive away the red man's food. 
Elk and antelope may wander into close vicinity to a 
trader's and an emigrant's trail; butfalo, a bolder and 
fiercer, but more cautious animal, never. 

"White man come, buffalo go," says Black Hawk, 
with his sharp logic ; " when buffalo gone, squaw and 
papoose die." 



48 N^W ABIERICA. 

From Black HaAvk's point of view, the policy of re- 
sisting our encroachments on their hunting-fields is 
beyond dispute. 

A second cause has helped to create the trouble 
which besets us on these plains. 

One of the great feuds which divide Eastern Amer- 
ica from "Western America — the States lying east of 
the Mississippi from the States and Territories lying 
west of the Big Drink — has its birth in the question, 
"What line of policy should be followed by the Govern- 
ment in dealing with the red men ? The Eastern cities 
are all for rose-water and baby-talk ; the Western cities 
are all for revolvers and bowie-knives. Each section 
has its sentiment and its passion. In Boston, no one 
believes that a red Indian can do wrong ; in Denver, 
no one believes that a red Indian can do right. Each 
party accuses the other of ignorance and petulance; 
Massachusetts looking on th'e red-skin solely in his 
romantic lights, as a representative of tribes and na- 
tions, dear to art and poetry, which are rapidly pass- 
ing into the land of dreams ; Colorado looking upon 
him solely in his prosaic aspects of a thief, a beggar, 
an assassin, who may have stolen white women and 
scalped white men. In Massachusetts, in Rhode Island, 
in ]^ew Hampshire, almost everybody has either made 
a sketch, composed a song, or read a romance, about 
the Indian ; while in Colorado, in JSTew Mexico and 
California, almost everybody has had a kinsman butch- 
ered, or a kinswoman carried off by that romantic per- 
sonage — a difference which may very well account for 
the radical opposition of ideas as to a true Indian 
policy regarding him in the East and in the West. 
Being strong in Washington, Massachusetts has com- 
monly had her own way in Kansas, and wherever a 
judge's writ will run ; being near to the plains, Colo- 



PRAIRIE INDIANS. 49 

rado lias sometimes had her own way in the lonely 
grass land and the nameless creek. 

One sudden blow Col(yrado dealt last year at her 
savage enemy, when a body of volunteer horse, under 
Colonel Shevington, broke into a Cheyenne camp at 
Sand Creek, a little way in our front, where a thousand 
Indians had encamped, under the command of White 
Antelope, an aged and renowned Cheyenne warrior. 
The Colorado volunteers, raised by orders from Wash- 
ington, rode in upon these Indians, shooting down 
brave and squaw and papoose in undistingnishing hate 
and wrath. White Antelope fell like the hero in a 
poet's tale; for, seeing that defense was idle, that 
escape was impossible, he sprang up a mound of sand, 
and, throwing open his embroidered jacket, bade the 
pale-faces fire. With twenty slugs in his body, he 
rolled upon the earth. Most of his followers fell 
around his corpse — old and young, men and women, 
wrinkled warriors and puling infants. Sixteen of the 
volunteers were slain ; and their comrades rode back 
into Denver, covered, as they imagined, Avith the glory 
of their deed. 

In New England, this raid upon the Cheyenne camp 
is everywhere denounced as the Indian massacre; in 
the ranches of these prairies, in the cities near the 
mines, it is everywhere celebrated as the big fight. 
Your opinion on the point is held to be a test of your 
good sense. In Boston, any approval of the big fight 
would subject you to a social ban ; in Denver, any 
denunciation of the Indian massacre would bring a 
bowie-knife into your side. After saying so much, I 
need scarcely add, that westward of the Missouri I 
have never met a man who does not say that the Sand 
Creek aftair, though terrible enough in some of its 
5 



50 N^W AMERICA. 

details, was a good and wholesome act of severity, an 
act that ought to be repeated twice a year, until every 
Indian tribe has been swept- away from these plains. 

Eastern men assert, that when Shevington attacked 
the Indian camp the Cheyennes were at peace with 
the whites, and that the American flag was floating 
above White Antelope's tent. Shevington denies these 
facts, asserting that the Cheyenne camp had been the 
refuge of dog soldiers, a band of red-skin outlaws and 
assassins, who had been plundering settlements and 
murdering teamsters and emigrants for many months, 
a fact which he and his Colorado friends assert was 
proved : in the first place, by the Indians having had a 
white girl, of sixteen, and three young white children 
in that very camp, whom they sold, after much palaver, 
to the citizens ; in the second place, by their boast of 
having two other white women in their lodges, whom 
they would neither give away nor sell ; in the third 
place, by the white men finding, when their camp was 
taken, a heap of rings, ribbons, photographs, and 
human scalps. 

One act of atrocity, committed by these Indians, is 
said to have roused, in a peculiar manner, the indigna- 
tion of Denver. In a ranch on Running Creek, near 
that city, lived with his wife and two children, a man 
named Hungate — an honest man, a good farmer, who 
stood well with his neighbors. The red men had swept 
down upon his lonely fixrm, had driven ofi" his cattle, 
had burnt his ranch, had violated his wife, had massa- 
cred his children, and shot himself. The heads of all 
the Hungate family were scalped, the bodies hacked 
and pounded. When they were found in this muti- 
lated state, they had been borne into Denver City, and 
made a public show, like the wounded men of Paris 
in '48, rousiner the hot blood of Colorado into madness. 



TUE RED MAN. 51 

White Antelope was made to answer for the blood 
of Hungate. 

Two of the scalps, wliich the volunteers under Shev- 
ington found at Sand Creek after the fight, are said to 
have been fresh: one, a white man's scalp, was hardly 
cold ; a second, a white woman's scalp, was declared 
by the army surgeon to have been drawn within ten 
days. 

Feud begets feud, and the strife of last year can only 
be answered by strife in the coming fall. A son of 
White Antelope is now going about the plains calling 
on the tribes and nations to rise and avenge his father's 
death, which Roman Nose, Black Hawk, Tall Bufi:alo, 
Lance, and Little Blanket, all powerful chiefs, are said 
to be willing enough to do, since they may gain a rare 
opportunity of gratifying their passion for blood while 
clearing these favorite buffalo-runs of all white dis- 
turbers of the Indian o-ame. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE RED MAN. 

A LONG line of poems and novels leads an English 
reader into habits of looking on the red man as a pic- 
turesque figure of the prairie and the lake, rather than 
as a living force in the midst of American cities. 
We have lodged the Indians in our minds as we have 
the men who exist for us only in tales and plays. 
When we recall either an Iroquois or a Mohican, he 
presents himself to our vision in his war-paint, in his 



52 NEW AMERICA. 

hniiting gear ; he is sitting in council under the Treaty 
tree, seeing God in clouds and hearing Him in the 
wind. We note him stealing forth with Hawk-eye on 
the war-path, watching over Minnehaha in the wig- 
wam, tearing himself from his old hunting-grounds 
on the Ohio, starting for his new home in the un- 
known West. We connect him with aged hemlocks, 
running waters, and silent valleys. But whether he 
comes before us in his hunting gear or in his paint 
and feathers, with a pipe of peace in his mouth, or a 
scalping-knife raised in his hand, he is ever the same 
for us: a being of the mind, a picture, a poem, a ro- 
mance ; not a man of flesh and blood, endowed with 
senses, rich in passions, fruitful in ideas, one strong to 
resist, one swift to impress, all men who may come 
into contact with him. 

In the United States people know him better. The 
red man lives among them like the black man: less 
ductile in genius, more prolific in ideas; having his 
own polic}', his own arts, his own traditions; with a 
power, which the black man has not, of giving back, 
no less than taking, in the way of thought. They 
have to deal with him from day to day as with a man 
having rights in the soil which no Yengee can deny, 
which no honest Yengee feels the wish to dispute. 

Kg race of men ever yet drove out another race of 
men from any country, taking their lands and cities 
from them, without finding on the spot which they 
came to own, a local genius, which affected their 
polity, their usages, and their arts. Man is a living 
power, acting and reacting on his fellow, through a 
natural law. All force is relative. If the strong act 
upon the weak, the weak react upon the strong. 
Numbers are strength; and if the higher race should 
have the disadvantage of being few in number, they 



THE RED MAN. 53 

will fall in some measure to the level of their slaves, 
ill spite of their first superiority in physical gifts and 
in moral power. Thus, the Roman masters of Greece 
adopted the art, the language, the religion, and at 
length the country they had won by the sword. The 
]!^orman hero became an English gentleman, helping 
to make that name the pioudest title borne on earth. 
After three generations, the settlers under Strongbow 
proved themselves more Irish in feeling than the Celts. 
Duke Rollo's soldiers softened into Sicilians. The 
Mantchoo Tartars have become Chinese, Even in 
cases where fire and sword have been used to thin 
oft' the original people, the effect has been pretty 
much the same. The Israelites were told to cut down 
the Hittites and Amorites, the Canaanites, Perizzites 
and Jebusites; and they slew the men of these nations 
without mercy, as they had been commanded from 
God. Yet the customs and ideas of these heathens 
clung to the soil, and generation after generation of 
the chosen people fell into sin by running after the 
native gods. Dagoii, Moloch, Ashtaroth, drew men 
away from Jehovah; and the arts of Tyre and Sidon 
acted upon those whom the sword of Jabin could not 
drive from the land. In like fashion, those red men 
whom our fore-comers found on the Atlantic sea- 
board, and whom they have been pushing back, at 
first toward the Alleghanies, then to the Ohio and the 
Wabash, afterward to the Mississippi, and at length 
beyond the great river as far west as the Kansas and 
the Arkansas, have left the traces of their former 
presence in the national mind; in the popular politics, 
in the popular science, in the popular life. They have 
done so in places from which they have wholly disap- 
peared, as well perhaps as in districts where they still 
exist; among the Spiritualists of New England, among 



54 NEW AMERICA. 

the Mormons of Salt Lake valley. Man is what he 
eats; and a nation grows into the likeness of that 
which it absorhs. Where the Indian has been de- 
stroyed by assimilation, the pale-face must have 
undergone a change, to be measured by the amount 
of resisting power; a quality in which some tribes of 
these red-skins are pre-eminently rich. When the 
Indian has survived the shock of conflict with the 
pale-face, as at Oneida Creek, at Wyandotte, at St. 
Mary's Mission, and in many otber places, the power 
of acting and reacting on the whites is still in force, 
aftecting the national character in a way which no 
man could have foreseen, and no one will now deny. 

The Anglo-Saxon power of assimilation is very 
great; but the Cheyenne and the Dakota present to it, 
perhaps, the very hardest meal it has ever been called 
upon to digest. The Anglo-Saxon has not gone far in 
the process of eating up the red man ; yet he shows by 
a hundred signs the effect of that indigestible meal 
upon his health. The Inchau fiber is exceedingly 
tough. Can any one say whether, up to this moment, 
though the white men have an easy mastery, the 
action of the white men on the red has been stronger 
than that of the red men on the white ? 

Let those who think so come into these Western 
plains, into the lands where red and white men live 
together in anything but harmony. They will find 
that each has acquired the other's vices; that while 
the Indian has learned how to beat his pale brother in 
debauchery, the white man has only come to equal his 
red brother in ferocity and craft. If the Yengee has 
taught the Indian to drink whisky, the Indian has 
taught the Yengee to keep squaws. JN'early all the 
old trappers and teamsters, who have lived among 
Indians, are polygamists: Jem Baker, of Clear Creek, 



THE RED MAN. 55 

has two squaws; Magcaiy, of South Platte, has three; 
Bent, of Smoky Hill, is said to have married six. As 
an Indian chief said to Colonel Marcy, "The first 
thing a Yengee wants in the plains is plenty wife." 
If Little Bear drinks and beats his squaw to death, 
Jem Smithers has learned to make a jest of taking 
scalps. I hear anecdotes in these plains to make the 
blood run cold. Jack Dunkier, of Central City, 
scalped five Sioux in the presence of his white com- 
rade. The same Colorado boy is said to have ridden 
into Denver with the leg of an Indian warrior slung 
to his saddle; a leg which he had cut from the trunk, 
and on which he reported that he had been living for 
two whole days, l^o one believed his story; but a 
boast is in its way a fact, and there is no doubt that in 
Denver City a white man openly boasted of having 
boiled and eaten steaks from a human thigh. A 
Pawnee would glory in such a deed; vaunting it 
afterward in the meetings of his tribe. The Yengee 
quickly learns to imitate the red man's crimes. One 
of the Sand Creek volunteers returned to Denver with 
a Avoman's heart on the head of a pole; having shot 
the squaw, ripped her breast open, and plucked out 
her heart. No one blamed him, and his trophy was 
received with shouts by a rabble in the public streets. 
I am glad to say, that white opinion underwent a 
change, even in the rough mining districts, with re- 
spect to this man's doings; not that any one dreamed 
of arresting him for his crimes, not that his comrades 
in the ranks thought any worse of him for his lark^ 
but the jokes of the grog-shop, the gaming-house, and 
the smoking-room turned rather freely on his deed, 
and the fellow being deficient in wit and patience, fled 
away from the town, and never came back. In a 
Cheyenne brave, such a crime as his would have 



56 NEW AMERICA. 

raised a warrior to the rank of a chief. One offence, 
though it implied no loss of life, appeared to me more 
revolting than even the murder of a squaw, of a pa- 
poose — the violation of Indian graves by the Yengees. 
A Government train, passing through the Indian ter- 
ritory, came upon a heap of stones and rocks, which 
the knowing trapper who accompanied the train 
pointed out as the burial-place of some great chief: 
when the Western boys ripped it open, kicked the 
bones of the dead warrior, and picked up the bow 
and arrows, the spoon of buffalo horn (an officer of 
the United States army gave me that horn as a keep- 
sake !), the beads and ornaments, the remnants of a 
buffalo robe in which the chief had been wrapped for 
his fi-hal rest. 

Along with many of their vices, the Yengees have 
borrowed from the Indians some of their simple vir- 
tues — a spirit of hospitality, a high respect for the 
plighted word, a sovereign contempt for pain and 
death. 

The red men have taught the whole world how to 
smoke the Indian weed. Have they received from 
the pale-face any one boon to compare with this gift 
from the savage to the civilized man ? 

It is no figure of speech to say that in White America 
red influence is very widely spread and very strongly 
felt, alike in the sphere of institutions and in the sphere 
of thought. 

The confederacy of the Five IsTations was the type 
adopted by the whites when framing the confedera '33'- 
of the Thirteen Colonies; not only as regards tk? 
principle of their Union, but also in respect to its 
most original details. The Iroquois had invented the 
theory of State Rights, which the colonists borrowed 
from them; an indefinable and dangerous theory, im- 



THE RED 3IAN. 57 

plying a power of separate action, perhaps of with- 
drawal, from the Union; leading to a thousand quar- 
rels, and to a civil war, of which the end has not yet 
been reached. These Iroquois had adopted the theory 
of extending their power and territory, not by adding 
to the limits of any existing nation of the confederacy, 
but by bodily introducing new tribes and nations into 
union ; a novel principle of political growth, which 
the white men also borrowed from them. Under these 
two principles, the Five IsTations had grown into Eight 
Nations; and the Thirteen Colonies, following in their 
wake and carrying on their work, have expanded into 
Forty-six States and Territories. 

In the conference of 1774, when commissioners 
from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, went to 
consult the Iroquois sachems at Lancaster, the great 
chief Casannatego addressed them in terms which a 
Greek member of the Achaian League might have 
used: "Our wise forefathers established union and 
amity between the Five Nations. This union has 
made us formidable. This has given us great strength 
and authority with our neighboring nations. By 
showing the same method, you will acquire fresh 
strength and power. Therefore, I counsel you, what- 
ever befalls you, never to fall out with one another." 
Otficial reports to Congress from the Indian bureau 
confess that this Iroquois confederation was the true 
political germ of the United States. 

The men of the Five Nations had very high notions 
of liberty, and that on both the public and the domes- 
tic side. Every man was considered equal to his fel- 
low. The sachem, even when he came of a ruling 
stock, was elected to his office. They had no heredi- 
tary rank, and no other titles than the names which 
described their function, such as warrior, counselor, 



58 NUW A3IERICA. 

and seer. They said that all men of Iroquois race, 
together with their allies, were born free and equal 
with each other; and that no man, thus freely born, 
could ever be made a slave. Indeed, they set their 
faces against slavery in any form. 'Eo Iroquois could 
own his fellow. If enemies were taken by him in 
war, they were either put to death or naturalized and 
adopted into his tribe. ISTay, the sentiment of free- 
dom was so strong in the Five Nations that they de- 
clared the soil itself free, so that no slave could be 
found within the districts hunted by these red men, 
even when negro slaves were everywhere being 
bought and sold in the streets of Boston, Philadel- 
phia, and ITew York. In time, however, some of the 
less noble tribes of Indians — Cherokees, Choctaws, 
and Chickasaws — learned from the white men to buy 
and to steal their negro brother, and to hold him in 
bondage, like a mule or a dog. 

Among many of the Lidian tribes, though less in 
these savage western provinces than among the Dela- 
wares, Mohicans, and Senecas, the women have a sin- 
gular degree of power; not only in the wigwam, 
where they occupy the seats of honor, but in public 
places and in public life; even the right of holding 
meetings and discussing questions of peace and war. 
Among the higher class of Indian tribes, the braves 
take a pride in paying to their squaws a measure of 
respect exceeding the mere courtesies of city life; 
often rising into what, for lack of a better name, might 
be called chivalry; a fine feeling of the strong toward 
the weak, as such ; a softening of the hard toward the 
gentle ; a bending of the warrior toward the hus-wife. 
Of course, in a settled society, where rights are 
guarded by law, not left to the caprice of individual 
will, there should be little need for this open and 



THE RED MAN. 59 

avowed protection, on the part of men toward women. 
It is a virtue of the savage and the semi-savage, of the 
hunter and the herdsman, of the Seneca Indian and 
the Anezi Arab, which has not failed to touch with 
moral and poetic beauty the manners of a people of 
far nobler grade. 

What man can doubt that Indian ideas on witch- 
craft, on polygamy, on plurality of gods, on the migra- 
tion of souls, on the presence of spirits, on future re- 
wards, have entered deeply into the popular mind, and 
are now affecting for good or ill the course of Ameri- 
can religious thought ? 

One of the first things to strike an English eye 
about these red-skins (after their paint and feathers, 
perhaps), is their division into tribes; the oldest form 
in which men were organized into societies. It is an 
Oriental system, found in Media and India, in Arabia 
and Scythia, among all the wandering and pastoral 
nations. In the first step from savage toward civil 
life, all races are divided into tribes, of either the fam- 
ily or the clan. In Sparta there were three of these 
original tribes, in Athens four, in Palestine twelve, in 
Rome three ; in each of which states one tribe would 
appear to have had some sort of regal superiority — the 
Hyllean at Sparta, the Eupatrid in Athens, the house 
of Judah in Palestine, the Ramnes in Rome. Among 
these multitudinous tribes of the red race, no such 
regal character appears to obtain; the Cheyenne ad- 
mits no moral superiority in the Sioux, the Mohican in 
the Seneca; each nation is a separate body; and the 
chief policy of the red natives is that of maintaining 
their tribal independence. From them the white set- 
tlers have borrowed the sentiment of State Rights. 



60 -^-EW A3IER1GA. 



CHAPTER VIL 

INDIAN LIFE. 

The story of Minnehaha, Laughing Water, has made 
known the fact that there exists, among these sons of 
the lake and prairie, a body of tradition available for 
art. The life of a red Indian — as he starts on a trail, 
as he hunts the bison and the elk, as he courts his 
mistress with the scalp of an enemy slain in battle or 
by stealth, as he leaps in the war-dance, as he buries 
the hatchet and lays by the knife, as he harangues his 
fellows in council, as he defies the malice ot his cap- 
tors, as he sits down under his hemlock and smokes 
the pipe of peace — is nothing less than a romance. 
His presence is a picture, his conduct a poem. The 
forest in which he dwells, the plain on which he hunts, 
the river along which he floats, are full to him of a 
myriad spirits. His canoe is an ark, his wigwam is a 
tent. On every side, he is in contact with the inner- 
most soul of things, and nature speaks to his ear out 
of every leaf and from every stone. What marvel, 
then, that his unwritten poetry should be of a wild and 
daring kind; new in its character, fresh in its colors, 
like and yet unlike to the Homeric, the Ossianic, and 
the Gothic primitive romance? 

A young hunter fell in love with a beautiful girl 
whom he sought for his wife, and being the pride of 
his tribe, both for swiftness in the race and for courage 
in war, his suit was accepted by her father, and she 
was given to him in marriage. On her wedding-day 
ahe died. Tearing a trench in the soil, the women 



INDIAN LIFE. 61 

swathed her limbs in a cloth, and after wailing over her 
body, laid her down in the bunch-grass. But the young 
hunter could not leave her. His bow was unstrune: in 

o 

the wigwam, his club lay idle on the ground, for his 
heart was buried in that forest grave, and his ears were 
no longer awake to the sounds of war and the chase. 
One joy was left to him on earth: — to sit by himself, 
near that mound under which his love lay at rest, pon- 
dering of his lost bride, and following her in fancy to 
the spirit-land. Old men of the tribe had told him, 
when a child, that souls go after death to the Blessed 
Isles, lying far off to the south, in a sunny clime, upon 
the bosom of a placid lake, under a sky of unfreckled 
blue; and one day, as he sat on the cold ground, with 
snow in the trees above him, the thought came into 
his mind that he would go in search of that Island in 
which the soul of his mistress dwelt. Turning his face 
to the south, he began his journey, which, for a long 
while, lay through a country of lakes, hills, valleys, 
much like his own; but in time, there appeared to be 
less snow in the trees, less frost on the streams, more 
brightness in the air, more verdure on the earth; then 
he came upon buds and blossoms, he saw flowers in the 
field, and heard warblings in the bush. Seeing a path 
into a thick grove, he followed it through the trees 
until it led him to a high ridge, on the top of which 
stood an Indian lodge. At the door of this lodge, an 
old man, with white hair, a pale face, and fiery eyes, 
covered with skins of wild beasts, and leaning on a 
statt', received him with a sad smile. The hunter was 
beginning to tell his story: — "Hush!" said the old 
man; "I expected you, and have risen to give you 
welcome. She whom you seek has been here; she 
rested for awhile, and then went on. Come into my 
lodge." When the hunter was refreshed with food and 
G 



62 N^W AMERICA. 

sleep, the old man led him forth of the lodge and said: 
" See you that gulf and the plain beyond? It is the land 
of souls. You stand upon its confines, and my lodge 
is the gate of entry. But only souls can pass beyond 
this gate. Lay down your bundle and your quiver; 
leave behind your body and your dog; now, pass into 
the land of spirits." The hunter bounded from the 
earth, like a bird on its wings. Forest, lake, mountain, 
were the same, but he saAv them with new eyes, and 
felt them with a strange touch. Nature seemed to 
have become luminous and vocal. The air was softer, 
the sky was brighter, the sward was greener, than they 
seem to our mortal senses. Birds sang to him out of 
trees, and animals came frisking past him. No creat- 
ure was afraid of him, for blood is never shed in the 
spirit-land. He went forward without effort, gliding, 
rather than walking, along the ground; passing through 
trees and rocks as a man in the flesh might walk 
through a wreath of spray and a cloud of smoke. At 
length he came to a wide and shining lake, from the 
midst of which sprang a lovely isle. A canoe of white 
stone lay close in shore, with paddles laid ready to his 
hand. Stepping into this boat, and pushing from the 
bank, he became conscious, as in a dream, that another 
white canoe was at his side, in which, pale and beauti- 
ful as he had last seen her, sat his bride. As he put 
forth from the bank, she put off also; answering to 
the motion of his oars like the chords in music. A 
tranquil joy was in the hunter's heart as they pushed 
their way toward the Blessed Isle. On looking for- 
ward toward the land, he was seized with fear for his 
beloved; a great white line of surf broke angrily in 
their front, and in the clear deep waters he could see 
the bodies of drowning men and the bones of thousands 
who had perished in that surf. His thews being strong 



INDIAN LIFE. 63 

and his courage calm, he had no fears for himself; but 
he yearned for her, exposed to the surf in that glitter- 
ing shell; but when they pushed boldly into the break- 
ers, they found their canoes go through them as through 
air. Around them were many boats, each freighted 
with a soul. Some were in sore distress, some wrecked 
and lost. The boats which bore young children glided 
home like birds. Those containing youths and maidens 
met with gusts and rollers. Older men were beaten by 
storms and tempests, each according to his deeds; for 
the calm and storm were not in the spirit-lake, but in 
the men who sailed upon it. Softly running to the 
shore, the hunter and his bride leaped lightly from 
their canoes upon the Golden Isle. What a change 
from the dull, cold earth on which the hunter lived! 
They saw no graves. . They never heard of war. JSTo 
gales ever vexed the air, no fogs ever hid the sun. Ice 
was unknown to that Blessed Isle. ISo blood was ever 
shed; no hunger and thirst were felt; for the very air 
which they breathed was food and drink. Their feet 
were never tired and their temples never ached. ISTo 
sorrowing was endured for the dead. Gladly would 
the hunter have remained forever with his bride in 
this spirit-land; but a great presence, called the Master 
of Life, came near to him, and speaking in a voice like 
a soft breeze, said to the young man: — "Go back to 
the land from which you came ; your day is not yet. 
Eeturn to your tribe, and to the duty of a good man. 
When that is done, you will rejoin the spirit which 
you love. She is accepted; she will be here forever; 
as young, as happy as when I called her from the land 
of snow." When the voice ceased from its speaking, 
the hunter started in his sleep — to find the little mound 
at his feet, snow in the trees overhead, and a numb 
sorrow in his heart. 



64 NEW AMERICA. 

Ah me, it was all a dream ! 

The red man believes in a god, or rather he believes 
in many gods; also in a life after death, to be shared 
by his horse, his hawk, and his dog. He thinks there 
is a good spirit and a bad spirit, equal in dignity and 
strength to each other; that, under them, live a multi- 
tude of gods ; spirits of the rock, the tree, the clouds, the 
river, and the frost; spirits of the wind, of the sun, and of 
the stars. No Greek shepherd ever peopled Hymettus 
and Arcadia, Orion and the Bear, with such swarming 
multitudes of shapes and radiances as the Cheyenne, 
the Pawnee, and the Snake believe to inhabit their 
plains and mountains, their creeks and woods, their 
lakes and skies. But the Indian has never yet learned 
to erect temples to his deities; being content to find 
them in tree and flower, in sunshine and in storm, in 
the hawk, the beaver, and the trout. His only religion 
is that of nature, his only worship a kind of magic. 
He believes in witches and in sorcerers; in their 
power to degrade men into beasts, to elevate beasts 
into men. Sleep is to him but another side of his life, 
and dreams are as real as his waking deeds. In his 
fancy all space is teeming with gods and spirits, which 
are close to him as he hunts and fights, capable of 
hearing his call to them, of making known to him 
their presence and their wishes by signs and sounds. 
He is the original source of all our spirit-rapping, all 
our table-turning; and in the act of invoking demons 
to his aid, he is still beyond the reach of such puny 
rivals as the Davenports and Homes. 

His religious rites are few and cabalistic; thus, he 
will sing for the sick, and offer meat to the dead ; he 
will put a charm in his ear, in his nose, and around his 
wrist — commonly a shell from the great sea — as a 
defense against evil spirits. He has no priest, as we 



INDIAN LIFE. 65 

understand the word, but lie submits himself abjectly 
to his prophet (jossakeed) and seer; and he does so, 
not only as regards his soul but his body. In fact, his 
prophet is his doctor also ; disease being in his opinion 
a spiritual as well as physical defect, only to be con- 
quered by one who has power upon sin and death. 
Brigham Young has very much the same function to 
perform at one end of Salt Lake that a Shoshonee 
soer may have to discharge at the other. 

The red men have no settled laws. Their govern- 
ment is patriarchal, the chief power being exercised, 
as in every savage horde, by the old men of the tribe, 
except in war time, when the bravest and most cunning 
take the lead. They know nothing about votes, either 
free or open, but in electing leaders they declare their 
preference with a shout. They have no conception of 
the use and power of work, and it is only with a slow 
and sullen heart that even the best among them will 
consent to practice a trade. They have about them a 
sense of having always been a wild tribe; a race of 
hunters and warriors, lords of the arrow and the club; 
and they are too proud to moil and toil, to do the 
offices of squaws and cowards. If they were not 
driven by hunger to the chase, they would do nothing 
at all, except drink and fight. In these things the 
Creeks and the Dakotas excel the most accomplished 
rowdies of Denver, Leavenworth, and New York. 

I cannot say that their domestic life is either noble 
or lovely. A prairie brave, mounted on a strong 
pony, with a rifle on his saddle, a blanket strapped 
behind him, dressed in a handsome skin jacket, 
adorned with beads and tags, with his squaw trudging 
heavily by his side on foot, carrying her papoose on 
her back, and a parcel of provisions in her hands, was 
6* 



66 A'^TF AMERICA. 

one of my earliest illustrations of the chivalries of 
Indian life. A mob of Ute warriors, tearing through 
the streets of Denver, rushing into shops and painting 
their faces, while the squaws and papooses tumbled 
after them in the mire, laden with cabbages, butfalo- 
skins, and miscellaneous domestic fry, was another. 
A listless, insolent crowd of Pawnees, smoking and 
drinking on the Paci^ road, while their squaws were 
laboring on the railway line as navvies, hired out by 
the braves at fifty cents a day and a ration of corn and 
meat uncooked, was a third. As such examples grew 
in strength upon me, I began to think the noble 
Indian was not so much of a gentleman as a believing 
reader of the Last of the Mohicans might suppose. 
" Why don't these fellows work for themselves, instead 
of lounging in groceries and grog-shops, while their 
wives are digging earth and carrying wood?" An 
Omaha friend who stood near me smiled: "Don't you 
see, they are warriors and gentlemen; they cannot 
degrade themselves by work." 

The Sioux, the Pawnee, the Cheyenne squaw, though 
she may have a certain power in the wigwam, and an 
uncertain liberty of speech in the council, when her 
character as a woman happens to be great, is, in many 
respects, and as a general rule, no better than a slave; 
such rights as she may exercise belonging to her 
rather as a member of the tribe than as a mother and 
a wife. Her husband has probably bought her for a 
blanket, for an old carbine, for a keg of whisky; and 
it depends wholly on the man's humor, on his fond- 
ness, whether he shall treat her as a lady or as a dog. 
He can sell her, he can give her away. The squaw's 
inferiority to the hunter is like that of the horse to his 
master. She is one of the man's chattels; one of 
ma 113^ like herself; for the Indian is a pol3^ganiist, and 



INDIAN LIFE. 67 

keeps a harem in the prairie. She has to perform all 
in-door, all ont-door labor; to fix the wigwam in the 
ground, to fetch water from the stream, to gather bil- 
lets from the bush, to dig roots and pick up acorns, to 
dress and cook the food, to make the clothes, to dry 
the scalps, to mend the wigwam, to carry her children 
on the march. And while she has a thousand toils to 
endure, she has scarcely any rights as either a woman 
or a wife. The man may put her away for the most 
trifling fault. Her infant may be taken from her lap. 
Her modesty is not always spared. While the sins 
into which her own fancies may have led her are 
visited with revolting punishment; she may be forced 
by her husband into acts of immorality which degrade 
her as a woman, not only in her own eyes, but in those 
of the companions of her shame. If she commits 
adultery without her husband's leave, his custom 
allows him to slit her nose; yet when the whimsy 
takes him, he may sell her charms to a passing guest. 
In the freedom of his forest life, it is common for the 
Shoshonee and the Comanche to oflter his squaw to 
any stranger visiting in his lodge. The theory of the 
wigwam is, that the female member of it is a chattel, 
and that her beauty, her modesty, her service, belong 
to her lord only, and may be given as he lists. For 
her there is nothing save to hear and to obey. 

And the Indian squaw is what such rules of life 
must make her. If her mate is cruel in disposition, 
she is savage ; if he is dirty in person, she is filthy ; if 
he is lax in conduct, she is shameless. When anything 
base and monstrous has to be done, it is left to the 
squaws. If an enemy is to be tortured, the women 
are set upon him. A brave might club his prisoner 
to death by a blow, but the sharper and slower agonies 
caused by peeling off his skin, by tearing out his nails, 



68 NEW AMERICA. 

by brealcing his finsrer-joints, hj putting fire under his 
feet, b}' gouging out his eyes, are only to be inflicted 
by tlie demons who have taken up their dwelling in 
female forms. 

All the men who fought against the Indians at Sand 
Creek, to whom I have spoken, describe the squaws as 
fighting more furiously than the braves; and all the 
white women (as I hear) who have had the double mis- 
fortune of falling into Indian hands, and surviving to 
tell the tale of their dishonor, exclaim against the 
squaws as deeper in cruelty and iniquity than their 
lords. The story of a white woman's captivity among 
the Sioux and Arappahoes is one that ought never to 
be told. In Colorado there are fifty, perhaps a hun- 
dred, females who have undergone the shame of such 
a passage in their lives; and it is fearful to see the 
flashing eyes, to hear the emphatic oaths, of either 
fixther, lover, or son to one of these wretched creat- 
ures, when a Cheyenne is spoken of otherwise than 
as a dog, whom it is the duty of every honest man to 
shoot. 

It would be a dangerous trial for a Yengee to say 
one word in favor of the Indians either in the streets 
of Denver and Central City, or along the route through 
the Rocky Mountains traveled by the wagon trains 
and the mail. 

Yet with all their faults, the Indians have some vir- 
tues and many capacities. They are brave. As a rule, 
they are chaste. In patience they have few equals ; in 
endurance they have none. They are affectionate 
toward their children; moderately faithful to their 
squaws. Their reverence for age, for wisdom, and for 
valor, is akin to religious feeling, and is only a little 
lower in degree than that which thej^ pay to their 
Great Spirit. In war time, and against an enemy, 



GARRYINa THE MAIL. 69 

they consider everything fair; but the first and worst 
of all vices in the savage, the habit of lying, is com- 
paratively rare in these red men. 



CHAPTER VIIL 



CARRYING THE MAIL. 



In bands from fifteen to forty, well armed and well 
mounted, the Cheyennes and their allies are moving 
along our line, plundering the stations, threatening 
the teamsters and drivers with fire and lead. A red- 
skin war is never sudden in its coming; for, as many 
tribes and nations must be drawn into it, there is much 
running to and fro, much smoking of tobacco, and a 
vast amount of palaver. When a man desires to have 
war, he must first persuade his chief and his tribe to 
dare it; next he must ride round the country into 
other tribes, whispering, haranguing, rousing, till the 
blood of many of the younger braves boils up. Meet- 
ings must be held, councils compared, and a decision 
taken by the allies. If the palavering, in which the 
aged and timid warriors have a principal share, is go- 
ing on slowly, some of the younger braves steal oflF 
into the enemy's land, where they provoke bad blood 
by plundering a ranch, driving away mules, if possible 
carrying oft^ women. They know that the white men 
will turn out and fight, that two or three braves may 
happen to get killed, and they are pretty sure that the 
nations which have suffered in the fray will then cry 
loudly for revenge. 



79 NEW AMERICA. 

As a rule, the white men, being few in number, un- 
supported by their Government, never resist these In- 
dian attacks, unless life is taken or women are captured ; 
short of these crimes being committed, the pale-face 
says it is cheaper to feed the red men than to fight 
them, since he must always meet them with a halter 
round his neck. A white man dare not fire on a band 
of Sioux, of Comanches, though he maj^ be perfectly 
sure that they are enemies, bent on taking his life. If 
he killed an Indian, he would be tried for murder. 
The red man, therefore, has his choice of when and 
where he will attack, and the grand advantage of be- 
ing able to deliver his volley when he pleases. It is 
only after some one has been killed that the white 
man feels himself safe in returning shot for shot. So, 
when parties of Indians come upon lonely ranches and 
stations on the plains, the white men have to kill, as it 
were, the fatted calf; that is to say, they have to bring 
forth their stores of bacon, dried buttalo-tougue, beans, 
and potted fruit, set the kettle boiling, the pan frying, 
and feed the rascals who are going to murder them, 
down to the very last pound of flesh, the very last crust 
of bread; only too happy if they will then go away 
into their wilds without taking away women and scalps. 
Of course, few women are to be found in these perilous 
plains; not a dozen between Wamego and Denver, I 
should say. 

Now, these small bands of Cheyennes and Arappa- 
hoes in our front have come from the great camp of 
the Six ISTations, lying near Fort Ellsworth, under the 
command of Eoman N"ose. They are going forward 
as a party of feelers and provokers, a little way in ad- 
vance of us, insulting the whites and eating up the 
road. At every station, after passing Fort Riley, we 
hear of their presence and of their depredations. 



CARRYING THE MAIL. 71 

Red-skins, however, will not permit themselves to 
be seen, unless the}" are friendly and mean to beg. In 
going over one of the long, low ridges of Smoky Hill, 
we observe a small party of Cheyennes moving along 
the opposite ridge; they are mounted, and leading 
spare horses, and, as we catch the gleam of their rifles, 
we know they are well armed. Unlike the Bedouin, 
every red-skin has a revolver of his own; some of 
them have two or three revolvers in their belts ; almost 
every one slings a rifle across his horse. They seem to 
be crossing our path. "Who are these Indians?" I 
ask the driver, by whose side I am sitting on the box. 
"Well," says he, in the deliberate Western fashion, 
" guess they are some cuss." They seem to have 
halted; for the moment, as I think, they are trying to 
prevent our seeing a white horse, which one of them 
is leading. " Guess I can't make them out, ' adds the" 
driver, after taking time to consider his want of opin- 
ion ; " if they M^ere friendly, they would come to us 
and beg; if they were thieves, they would hide in the 
creek, so as not to be seen ; guess they are out on the 
war-path." When they draw up we can count them ; 
they are only five men in number, with four led horses 
in addition to their own. Five men would not dream 
of attacking the mail, in which there might be a dozen 
men and guns; especially not when the blinds are 
down, and they cannot from their coign of vantage see 
into the coach and count the number of their foes. A 
sure knowledge of the enemies to be met in fight ie a 
cardinal point in the system of an Indian warrior, who 
prides himself more on his success than even on his 
valor. Rich in stratagem, he is always afraid of am- 
buscade ; and he rarely ventures to attack an enemy, 
when, from either want of light or any other cause, he 
cannot see into every element of his game. 



72 NEW AMERICA. ^ 

This Indian tact is of use to us now. In the pres- 
ence of our Cheyenne neighbors, we draw the cur- 
tains of our wagon pretty close, so that the red-skins, 
who can see that we are two outside, the driver and 
myself, cannot tell how many more may be sitting in- 
side with revolvers. They know, in a general way, that 
no one rides outside the stage in the burning heat of 
these plains, unless the inside seats are filled. The 
rule is not good for us, our seats being occupied with 
mail-bags ; but the Cheyennes and Comanches have no 
notice of our straits. Now, five red-skins, though they 
might rush upon a single man, or even upon a couple 
of men, no better armed than themselves, against whom 
they would enjoy the privilege of firing the first volley, 
will always pause before pulling a trigger on a foe of 
invisible and unknown strength. It is, therefore, with- 
out surprise, though with much inward satisfaction, 
that we see them break up their council, fall into line, 
and move along the creek in such a way as to increase 
the distance between us at every stride. 

At the next log-hut we find that this party of Chey- 
ennes, with the led horses, stolen from some wagon 
train, have been here ; very insolent and masterly; not 
mincing words ; not concealing threats. They have 
eaten up everything in the station : the dried elk, the 
buftalo-tongue, the fat bacon, the canned fruits; have 
compelled the boys to boil them coftee, to fetch clean 
water, to mend their horses' shoes ; and have left the 
place with a notice that the mail must be stopped, the 
stock removed, and the shanties burnt. 

Having tasted a little putrid water, seasoned with a 
few drops of cognac, happily carried from New York, 
we push out of the station, following in the track of 
these menacing braves. We crash through ravines, in 
which our driver believes they lurk, and we pass little 



CARRYING THE MAIL. 73 

mounds, under which the scalpless heads of wliite men, 
murdered in the recent frays, have scarcely yet grown 
cold. The long green line of the Smok}^ Hill is on 
our left, not half a mile from our course, which lies 
for two or three days and nights along the bank of 
Smoky River. As we dash into Low Creek, we find 
the men in a scare, though they are only a few miles 
distant from Ellsworth. A party of Chej-ennes have 
been to the station, have eaten up their food, have 
taken away what they wanted, and promised to return 
in fifteen days to burn down the shanty and murder 
the men. The boys say these Indians will come back 
before the end of their fifteen days. They notice many 
signs of the red man's anger which are invisible to us. 
The blacksmith went out in the morning ; but he saw 
enough in an hour to induce him to scamper back. A 
farmer, living in a ranch close by, has called in his 
man and horses from the plains. Every one is belted 
and on guard ; in all, five men against as many thou- 
sand red-skins. With some satisfaction, we hear of 
seven United States soldiers, from the fort, having rid- 
den on in front of us, looking after buffalo and red- 
skins. The mules having been yoked, our revolvers 
fired off and reloaded, and a can of bad water swal- 
lowed, we light our cigd,r8 and jump on the wagon. 

Just as we are sallying from the station, a riderless 
horse comes sweating and panting into the yard, and 
is instantly recognized as belonging to one of those 
soldiers who had passed through in the early day, 
looking after buffalo and red-skins. One or other he 
seems to have found. Bill the driver pulls at his reins, 
doubtful whether he ought to go out; but on second 
thoughts, with an ugly twist of the jaw and resolute 
scowl on his brow, he whips his team into a rage, and 
plunges out with them upon the hot and arid plains. 
t 



74 NEW AMERICA. 

Half a mile from tlie station, we come upon a dying 
hOTse, which the driver says had belonged to one of 
those soldiers who had gone before us. The beast is 
ripped through the belly; but whether he has been 
gored by a bufialo horn or slit open with a knife, we 
cannot decide as we roll swiftly by. Saddle and trap- 
ping have been taken away; but there is nothing to 
tell by whom, or for what end. 

With fingers laced on our revolvers, we keep a keen 
eye upon objects, both far and near. At Chalk Bluff 
we find Kelly and Walden, the two stockmen, horribly 
scared. Kelly, an Irish lad, makes a wry face and a 
joke about the dirty vermin, who have just been here; 
but "Walden, a Yankee, who has been through the 
war, is painfully white and grave. They believe these 
Cheyennes mean mischief. We give the brave lads a 
little cognac, wring their hands, and bid them be of 
good cheer, as we rattle off in the wagon. 

(I am sorry to say, that three weeks afterward these 
men were murdered by the Cheyennes. The Indians 
came to the hut, and, as usual, asked for food and to- 
bacco. Kelly put their dinners on the table, which 
they instantly devoured. I cannot say how the poor 
men came to be so careless as they must have been, 
when the Cheyennes, catching them off their guard, 
lanced Kelly through the heart, and shot Walden in 
the bowels. Kelly fell dead, and Walden only lived a 
few hours. A wagon came up, and a white man heard 
the story from his lips.) 

The whole road is unarmed, unprotected; for the 
two forts, Ellsworth and Wallace, each with a couple 
of weak companies, stand at a distance from each other 
of two hundred and twenty miles. If they are able to 
defend themselves it is thought enough. Pond Creek 
lies a mile from Fort Wallace: a woman and her 



CARRYING THE MAIL. 75 

daughter, Mrs. and Miss Bartholomew, Hve here; and 
when a party of Cheyennes came into the station yes- 
terday, eating it up, and threatening to burn it down, 
the woman sent a driver up to the fort, which contains 
a garrison of one hundred and fifty men, with two 
field-pieces, and begged for help; but Lieutenant 
Bates, the gentleman in command, replied to her cry 
of distress, that if she and her daughter need protection, 
they must seek it in the lines, as he cannot spare a man 
to defend the road along which we are guarding the 
imperial mail ! 

She is packing a few things in a handkerchief, and as 
we drive out of the yard, we see the two women start 
off for the military post. 

From Big Timber station, a place where we find a 
few trees, most welcome to our sight, the red-skins 
have hardly gone, as we roll in ; they have been here 
three days, a party of twenty-eight, with Little Blanket 
at their head; Ciiting the fat bacon, sipping the hot 
coffee, and lording over the stockmen like kings over 
conquered slaves. The country, they said, is theirs, 
and everything brought into it is theirs. "When about 
to go away, they counted these trees, fifty-one in num- 
ber. "ISTo cut down trees," they said, "we like them 
to stand there, in the creek." Pointing to a stack of 
hay, laid up for the mules, they added, with a grim 
and smiling humor, "Cut grass, — cut plenty grass, — 
make big fire ; ' ' and, as they rode away, the chief turned 
round, and said, "Fifteen days we come back; you 
gone, good; you not gone — ugh!" accompanying his 
threat with a horrible pantomime, expressive of lap- 
ping flames. 

At Cheyenne Wells we have another domestic scene. 
Long before coming to this station, we heard from 
drivers and trainmen of Jack Dunbar, the station- 



76 NUW AMERICA. 

keeper, as a^ reckless Colorado devil, one of those 
heroes of Saud Creek who had sent a sing into the 
heart of White Antelope, when the aged red-skin had 
hared his breast and called on the troops to fire. We 
hoped to find one man, at least, unscared by this Indian 
raid along our line; but on our wheeling into his yard, 
we see that everything is wrong, for Dunbar has a 
wife at Cheyenne Wells, and his own share in the ex- 
ploit of Sand Creek being well known to the Indians, 
he is fearful that the first sharp blow of the coming 
war may fall upon her head. A glance at the way bill 
tells him that the stage is full, that passengers who 
have paid their hundreds of dollars have been left be- 
hind for want of room ; but then, as he says, it is a 
question of life and death, — of a woman's life and 
death, — and he comes to us, cap in hand, with a prayer 
that we will carry on his wife into a place of safety. 
For himself, he is willing to stand by his stock, defend- 
ing himself and his stable to the last; but the poor 
woman cannot fight, and in case of his own death, be- 
fore he should have time to kill her, her fate would be 
revolting, far beyond the power of an English imagina- 
tion to conceive. 

What can we do, but ofi'er to comply? A fresh dis- 
posal of the mail-bags; a new twist of our limbs; and 
a hole is made in the vehicle, into which the hero's 
wife inserts her slim and plastic body. A pillow thrust 
behind her head, protects her from many a bump and 
blow; but when we lift her, thirty hours later, from 
the wagon, it is hard to say whether she will live or die. 

In the night, we rougher fellows get a little rest and 
relief by climbing to the box, breathing the cold air, 
and occasionally curling up our legs in the boot. It 
is only the fiery day that kills. 

As the sun works westward toward his setting, the 



RED COMMUNITIES. 77 

air grows cooler to the skin, softer in. the lungs; and 
a spring of life comes back as it were into the veins. 
Our pulses quicken, our chests dilate, our limbs put 
out new strength. The weird and pensive solitude of 
the prairie grows into our souls as the stars peep out; 
and when the ancient moon lifts up her head from the 
horizon, bathing the vast ocean of rolling grass in her 
tender light, we feel in the beauty and majesty of ]S"a- 
ture such a sovereign balm, that unless the scalping- 
knife were in his hand, we could salute either a 
Cheyenne or a Sioux as a man and a brother. 



CHAPTER IX. 



RED COMMUNITIES. 



Between the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, 
there may be two hundred tribes and tribelets of the 
red men: Creeks, Dakotas, Mohicans, Cheyennes, 
Pawnees, Shoshones, Cherokees, Sioux, Comanches, 
and their fellows, more or less distinct in genius and 
in shape: men who once roamed over these hills and 
valleys, danced in their war-paint, hunted the elk and 
the bison, and left their long and liquid names to many 
American rivers and American States. 

What to do with these forest people has been the 
thought of colonist and ruler from those early days 
when the first Saxon came into the land. At times, 
perhaps, an adventurer here and there has plied them 
too freely with the carbine and the cruse; but his bet- 
7* 



78 N^W AMERICA. 

ter nature and his higher principle have brought him 
to regret this use of powder and whisky, the de- 
stroying angels of civilization ; and from the days of 
Penn, at least, the red man's right in the country has 
been commonly assumed by writers, and his claim to 
compensation for his lost hunting-ground has been re- 
cognized by the laws. 

This policy of paying money for the land taken by 
the white men from the red was the more just and 
noble, as Indians, like the Senecas and the "Walla- 
Wallahs, have no clear sense of what is meant by 
rights in the soil. The soil? They know no soil. 
A Seneca comprehended his right to fish in the Hud- 
son River; a Walla- Wallah understood his right to 
hunt bison in the plains at the feet of the Blue Mount- 
ains; but as a thing to plow and plant, to dig wells 
into, to l)uild houses upon, the soil was no more to 
them than the sea and the sk}^ are to us. A right to 
go over it they claimed; but to own it, aud preserve 
it against the intrusion of all other men, is a claim 
which the red men have never made, and which, if 
they should learn to make it, could never be allowed 
by civilized men. No hunting tribe has any such 
right; perhaps no hunting tribe can have any such 
right ; for, in strict political philosophy, the only ex- 
clusive right which any man can acquire in land, the 
gift of nature, is that which he creates for himself by 
what he puts into it by way of labor and investment 
alike for his own and for the common good. ISTow, a 
slayer of game does nothing for the land over which 
he roams; he clears no forest, he drains no marsh, he 
embanks no river, he plants no seed, he cultivates no 
garden, he builds no city; what he finds at his birth 
he leaves at his death ; and no more property would. 



RED CO 3131 UNITIES. 79 

under such conditions, accrue to him in the soil than 
in the air. But, in dealing with such men as the 
Sioux and the Delawares, is it wise to be always bring- 
ing our political logic to the front? A law which the 
strong has to enforce, and which weighs upon the 
weak, may be tempered with mercy, even when it 
cannot be generally set aside. A little love, say the 
philanthropists, may go a long way. The land is 
here; we come and seize it; gaining for ourselves a 
possession of untold v/ealth, while driving the hunter 
from rivers and forests which before our coming had 
yielded his family the means of life. Ours is the profit, 
his the loss. Our wants can hardly be the measure of 
our rights ; and if the Walla- Wallah has few rights in 
the soil, the stranger who displaces him has, in the 
first instance, none at all, beyond that vague common 
right which every human being may be supposed to 
possess in the earth on which he is born. A com- 
promise, then, would appear to these reasoners to 
ofifer the only sound issue out of such conflicting 
claims: and an Englishman, jealous — for family 
reason — of everything done by his brethren in the 
United States, may feel proud that, as between Yen- 
gees and Indians, the strong have dealt favorably with 
the weak. 

Washington laid down a rule for paying to each 
tribe driven back from the sea by settlers a rental for 
their lands; arrangements for that purpose being 
made between a Government agent and a recognized 
chief; and these payments to the Apalachian and 
Algonquin tribes and tribelets have ever since that 
day been made by the United States government with 
unfailing good faith. 

But a legal discharge of this trade obligation was far 



80 NEW AMERICA. 

from being enough to satisfy conscientious men, who 
felt that in coming upon the Indian plain and forest 
they were driving a race of hunters from their fields, 
and cutting away from them the means by which they 
lived. Could nothing else be done for the red man? 
These white men saw that the past was past. A 
tribe of hunters, eating the flesh of antelope and buf- 
falo, could not dwell in a province of farms and pas- 
tures. The last arrow had been shot when the home- 
stead rose; it was only a question of years until the 
bow must be broken and the archer cast aside. A 
hunter needs for his subsistence an area wide enough 
to feed thousands of men who can make their living 
by the plow and the spade. In a planet crowded like 
ours, no room can be found to grow the hunter's food; 
for the wild buck which he traps, the elk which he 
runs down, the bison which he slays, will only breed 
in a country that is seldom disturbed by man. The 
smoke of a homestead drives away buflalo and deer. 
Even a pastoral tribe can find room enough only in 
the wilds of Asia and Africa, where the feuds between 
tent and city burn with consuming heat; yet a people 
living by pasturage, driving their flocks before them 
in search of herbage, require very little ground for 
their sustenance compared against a people living by 
the chase. "What then? Must the red man perish 
from the earth? Should he die to let the white man 
live upon his land? Thousands of voices cried out 
against such sentence; at least until the white man, 
who had brought his law upon the scene, could say 
that every effort to save the Indian had been made, 
and that every experiment had failed. 

Then came the question (only to be laid at rest by 
trial), whether the Seneca, the Delaware, the Oneida, 



RED C03IMUNITIE8. 81 

and the Chippewa could be trained in the arts of life; 
could be persuaded to lodge in frame-houses, to live 
in one place, to plant corn and fruit-trees, to wear 
trowsers and shoes, to send their little ones to school? 
A number of pious persons, full of zeal for the red 
race, though lacking true knowledge of the course 
through which !N"ature works, put themselves to much 
cost and trouble in trying these experiments. These 
reformers had a strong belief in their power of doing- 
things, so to say, by steam — of growing habits of life 
under glass, and of grafting civilization with the knife. 
They fell to their work with unflinching spirit. Lands 
were given up to the red-skins; teachers were provided 
for them; schools, chapels, saw-mills, houses, were 
built for them; all the appliances of farming — plows 
and flails, corn-seed and fruit-trees, horses and oxen, 
poultry and pigs — were furnished, more or less freely, 
from the white man's stores. A true history of these 
trials would be that of a great endeavor, an almost 
uniform failure; fresh proof that Nature will not suf- 
fer her laws to be broken, her order contravened, and 
her grades disturbed, 

A tribe of Senecas was placed upon the Alleghany 
River in a fine location ; a tribe of Oneidas settled 
on a reservation, in the center of jN'ew York, called 
Oneida Creek. Care and money were lavished on 
these remnants of red nations; farms were cleared, 
houses built for them ; but they would not labor with 
their hands to any purpose; not with the caution, the 
continuity, needful to success in growing grain and 
stock. A good harvest made them lazy and improvi- 
dent; a bad harvest thinned them by starvation and 
disease. One or two fiimilies, in whom there was a 
tinge of white blood, made pretty fair settlers; the 



82 NEW AMEBIC A. 

rest only lived on the land so long as they could sell 
the timber and the game. As wood grew scarce, and 
game disappeared, they began to sell the land; at first 
to appointed agents ; and to move away into the wild 
country of Green Bay. Most of the tribe have now 
left Oneida; — with the exception, perhaps, of the 
Walkers, all will quit their ancient Creek in time. 
Bill Beechtree, one of the remnants, cut me some 
hickory sticks, and showed me some bows and arrows 
which he makes for sale. He can do and will do 
nothing else. Though he never drew bow against an 
enemy in. his life, and has a very nice voice for a 
psalm-tune, he considers any other occupation than 
cutting sticks and barbing arrows unworthy of the son 
of a brave. 

The Delawares whom we saw near Leavenworth, 
the Pottawottamies whom we found at St. Mary's 
Mission, are in some respects better oil' than the 
Oneidas, being settled in the midst of friendly whites, 
among whom they continue to live, but only in a 
declining state. Both these tribes have engaged in 
farming and in raising stock. The Delawares rank 
among the noblest nations of the red men ; they have 
finer forms, cleaner habits, quicker senses, than the 
Cheyennes and the Pawnees. A fragment of this 
people may be saved, by ultimate amalgamation with 
the surrounding whites, who feel less antipathy for 
them than for Sioux and Utes. The Pottawottamies 
have been lucky in attracting toward their settlement 
in Kansas the wise attentions of a Catholic bishop. 
At St. Mary's Mission, half a dozen priests have 
founded schools and chapels, taught the jjeople re- 
ligion, and trained them to habits of domestic life. 
Two thousand children are receiving lessons from 



RED COMMUNJTIES. 83 

these priests. The sheds are better built, the stock 
better tended, and the land better tilled at St. Mary's 
than they are in the reservation of any Indian tribe 
that I have seen — except one. 

At Wyandotte, on the Missouri River, some Shawnee 
families have been placed; and here, if anywhere in 
the Red Land, the friends of civilization may point 
the moral of their tale. Armstrong, their chief and 
their richest man, has English blood in his veins; in- 
deed, many of these Shawnees can boast of the same 
high title to respect among their tribe. They farm, 
they raise stock, they sell dry goods; some of them 
marry white girls, more give their daughters to 
whites; and a few among them aspire to the mysteries 
of banking and lending money. A special act endows 
these Shawnees wnth the rank of citizens of Kansas, 
in which capacity they serve on juries and vote for 
members of Congress. 

But the Shawnees of Wyandotte, being a people 
mixed in blood, can hardly be used as set-off against 
a score of undoubted failures. 



84 NUW AMERICA, 



CHAPTER X. 

THE INDIAN QUESTION. 

Now, the blame arising from these faikires to found 
any large red settlement in the old countries once 
owned by Iroquois and Algonquin has been constantly 
charged against the red man. Is this charge a just 
one? Is it the Delawares' fault that he cannot pass 
in one generation from the state of a hunter into that 
of a husbandman ? If a man should have his lodge 
built with a green shoot instead of with a strong tree, 
whose fault would it be when the lodge came down in 
a storm ? 

Every one who has read the annals of our race — a 
page of nature, with its counterfoil in the history of 
everything having life — is aware that in our progress 
from the savage to the civilized state, man has had to 
pass through three grand stages, coi'responding, as it 
were, to his childhood, to his youth, and to his man- 
hood. In the first stage of his career, he is a hunter, 
living mainly by the chase ; in the second stage, he is 
a herdsman, living mainly by the pasturage of goats 
and sheep, of camels and kine ; in the third stage, he 
is a husbandman, living mainly by his cultivation of 
corn and maize, of fruits and herbs. These three 
conditions of human life maybe considered as finding 
their purest types in such races as the Iroquois, the 
Arabian, and the Gothic, in their present stage ; but 
each condition is, in itself and for itself, an aftair of 



THE INDIAN QUESTION. 85 

development and not of race. The Arab, who is now 
a shepherd, was once a hunter; the Saxon, who is 
now a cultivator of the soil, was first a hunter, then a 
herdsman, before he became a husbandman. Man's 
progress from stage to stage is continuous in its course, 
obeying the laws of physical and moral change. It is 
slow ; it is uniform ; it is silent ; it is unseen. In one 
word, it is growth. 

No one can step at his ease from the first stage of 
human existence into the second ; still less can he 
step from the first stage into the third. All growth is 
a work of time, depending on forces which are often 
beyond the control of art ; work to be helped perhaps, 
not to be hurried, by men. As in the training of a 
vine, in the rearing of a child, a wise waiting upon 
nature seems our only course. 

These three stages in our progress upward are 
strongly marked ; the interval dividing an Iroquois 
from an Arab being as wide as that which separates 
an Arab from a Saxon. 

The hunter's habits are those of a beast of prey. 
His teeth are set against everything having life; every 
beast on the earth, every bird in the air, being an 
enemy against which his club will be raised and his 
arrow will be drawn. On passing into the stage of a 
herdsman, he becomes used to the society of horses, 
dogs, and camels, animals of a tender breed ; he finds 
himself charged with the care of sheep and goats, of 
cattle and fowls, creatures which he must pity and 
tend, bearing with their humors under penalty of their 
loss. If he would feed upon their milk and eggs, if 
he would clothe himself in their wools and skins, he 
must study their wants, and care for them with a 
parent's eye. It will become his business to serve 
and guard them ; to seek out herbage and water for 
8 



86 NEW A3TERICA. 

them ; to consider their times and seasons ; to prepare 
for them a shelter from the heats of noon and the 
frosts of night. Thus, a man's relation to the lower 
world of life must undergo a change. Where, in his 
savage state, he sharpened his knife against every 
living thing, he has now to become a student of 
nature, a nursing father to an ever-increasing family 
of beasts and birds. 

Such cares as occupy all pastoral tribes — the Arab 
in his tent, the Caffir in his krall, the Kirghis in his 
hut — are utterly unknown to the Seneca, the Sho- 
shonee, and the Ute ; the softer manners which result 
from the paternal relation of men to domestic animals 
having no existence in any hunting tribe. To advance 
from the stage of a Seneca into that of an Arab, is a 
march requiring many years, perhaps many gener- 
ations, to accomplish ; and even when that stage of 
pastoral existence shall have been gained, with all its 
changes of habit and of thought, the hunter will be 
only halfway on his path towards the position occu- 
pied by a grain-growing Saxon. After the second 
stage of this journey has been accomplished by the 
red man, those who have visited Nahr Dehab in Syria, 
and watched the trials there being made by the Turks 
in settling the Ferdoon Arabs on the soil, will feel 
inclined to wait for any further results of his effort in 
a very calm and dispassionate frame of mind. 

The Cheyenne is a wild man of the woods, whom 
neither cold nor hunger is strong enough to goad into 
working for himself, his children, and his squaws. 
How should it? A man may die of frost and snow, 
and even for lack of food, without bringing dishonor 
upon his tribe; but to labor with his hands is, in his 
simple belief, a positive disgrace. A warrior must 
not soil his palm with labor, seeing that his only 



THE INDIAN QUESTION 87 

duties in the world are to hunt and tight. If maize 
must be planted, if roots must be dug, if fires must 
be lit, if water must be carried, where is the squaw ? 
Not much work is ever done in a Cheyenne lodge ; 
but whether it be much or little, the man will take no 
part of the trouble upon himself. To kill his enemy 
and to catch his prey — that, in a line, is the Cheyenne's 
whole duty of man. Starvation itself will not drive 
him into treating industry as a duty; the neglect of 
which, even in another, is never, in his eyes, an oftence. 
In some of the western tribes, where game is running 
scarce and the beavers evade the trap, the squaws and 
little ones throw a handful of grain into the soil; but 
the hunters give no heed to their work; and if, on 
their return to the spot, later in the year, the men find 
that their squaws have omitted to sow the maize, the 
idea of anybody working and waiting for a crop to 
grow is so foreign to their Indian taste, that they sit 
down and laugh at the neglect as a passing jest. If 
the tribe runs short of food, the hunter's remedy is to 
march against his neighbor, and by means of his bow 
and his tomahawk, to create a fresh balance between 
the mouths to be fed and the quantity of buft'alo and 
elk which may be found to feed them. This rude 
remedy for want is his only art. Any thought of 
making the two ends of his account meet by setting 
up beehives and multiplying herds, would never pre- 
sent itself unbrought to his simple mind. His fathers 
having always been hunters, the only resource of his 
tribe, when their food runs short, is the original one 
of breaking through every obstacle to a fresh supply 
with his club. 

Can we marvel, then, that when the Senecas were 
placed upon such land as the Alleghany reservation, 
in a bountiful and fruitful country, rich in white pines, 



88 NEW AMEBIC A. 

and in other valuable trees, they should have done 
little or nothing in the way of planting and sowing; 
that they should have sold their timber to the whites ; 
that they should have rented their saw-mills and ferries 
to the whites; that they should have let out their 
rafting yards and landing-places to the whites ; in 
short, that they should have starved on a few dollars 
derived from rent, while the more eager and in- 
dustrious Yankee, placed in the same location, would 
have coined the real riches of the country into solid 
gold? Like his Arab brother at IsTahr Dehab, the 
Seneca on the Alleghany could not delile his hands 
with work— the business, not of Avarriors, but of 
squaws. 

It is only fair, then, to remember, that the failure 
of so many attempts to convert the hunter into a hus- 
bandman at a single step was due to great laws of 
nature, not to the perversity of man. The chasm 
could not be bridged; but your eager and well-mean- 
ing friends of the red race, having no science to guide 
them, had to work this truth for themselves out of 
vague ideas into visible facts. In their ignorance of 
the general laws of growth, they saw their very s^^m- 
pathies and generosities changed into destroying 
powers; for the Indians who gave up their lands to 
the white men, receiving rentals or annuities in return 
for them, had to abandon their old habits of life with- 
out being able to enter on any new employments. 
And what was the end of this change for them ? 
Hanging about the skirts of towns, they ate and 
drank, rioted and smoked, themselves into premature 
old age. Of a hundred millions of dollars which 
have been paid to the red man, it is said that fifty 
millions at least have been spent in grog-shops and in 
houses of evil name. The misery is, that in their 



THE INDIAN QUESTION. 89 

savage state the red men have to live in the light of a 
high civilization. The ferns which grow in their 
native forests would not more surely perish if thej 
were suddenly planted out in the open sun. 

The same hasty desire to bring the red savage into 
close relation with white civilization affects the policy 
pursued by government agents in these Plains. In 
the American part of Red India failure of justice is 
the rule ; in the Canadian part of Red India failure 
of justice is extremely rare ; and the reason is this, 
the trappers and traders living beyond the Canadian 
frontier deal with robbery and murder with a prompt- 
ness and simplicity unknown to American judges. 
My friend, Jem Baker, a sturdy old trapper, who 
resides with his squaws and papooses on Clear Creek, 
near Denver, put the whole case into a few words. 
"You see, colonel," says Jem, to whom every gentle- 
man is a colonel, "the difierence is this: if a Sioux 
kills a white man near Fort Ellice, you English say, 
'Bring him in, dead or living, here's two hundred 
dollars; ' and Avhen the Indians have brought him in, 
you say again, 'Try him for his life; if he is guilty, 
hang him on the nearest tree.' All is done in a day, 
and the Indians have his blood upon themselves. 
But if a Sioux kills a white mjjji near Fort Laramie, 
we Americans say, 'Bring him in with care, along 
with all the witnesses of his crime ; ' and when the 
Indians have brought him in, we say again, ' He must 
have a fair trial for his life ; he must be committed by 
a justice and sent before a judge, he must have a good 
counsel to speak up for him, and a jury to try him 
who know nothing about his crime.' So most times 
tie gets off, has a present from some lady perhaps, and 
goes back to his nation a big ^lief." 

I have heard the details of cases in which Indian 
8* 



90 ^EW AMERICA. 

assassins, taken all but red-handed, have been sent to 
Washington for trial, three thousand miles away from 
the scenes and witnesses of their crimes; who, on 
being acquitted from the lack of such evidence as 
complicated legal methods require, have come back 
into these prairies, bearing on their arms and nfecks 
gifts of philanthropic ladies, and taking instant rank 
as leaders in their tribes. A simpler and swifter form 
of trial is needed on these Plains — on penalty of such 
irregular acts of popular vengeance as the battle of 
Sand Creek. 

The truth is, the eastern cities have always shirked 
the Indian question ; fearing to face it boldl}^, hoping 
it would drop out of light and vex their spirits no 
more, " We push our way," said Secretary Seward 
to me, condolingly; "ninety years ago, my grand- 
father had the same sort of trouble with Indians, only 
sixty miles from New York, that you have now been 
suffering six hundred miles beyond St. Louis." I am 
often surprised by the splendid confidence which 
Americans express in their power of living down 
everything which they find unpleasant ; but I am not 
convinced that this policy of pushing the red man off 
this continent is the only method of procedure. 

If policy compels this people to make a new road 
from St. Louis to San Francisco, policy suggests that 
the road should be made safe. Thus much will be 
admitted in Boston as well as in Denver. But how is 
a path through the buffalo-runs to be made safe? By 
the white men going out every spring to beg a treaty 
of peace from Roman Nose and Spotted Dog, paying 
for it with baby talk, blankets, fire-arms, powder, and 
whisky ? That is the present method of proceeding, 
and no one, except th§,agents, finds it much of a suc- 
cess. My own impi-ession is, that such a method can 



THE INDIAN QUESTION. 91 

have only one result, to deceive the red man into an 
utterly false impression of the white man's weakness. 
These Cheyennes actually believe that they are 
stronger, braver, and more numerous than the Ameri- 
cans. If one of these fellows, who may have been at 
St. Louis, reports to his tribe that the white men of 
the sunrise are many beyond counting, like Irfie flowers 
on the prairie, they say that he has been seized by a 
bad spirit, and made into a speaker of lies. Thus, 
they hold the white men in contempt. 

If these new roads are to be kept open, and blood is 
to be spared, this position of the white and red man 
should be reversed, and the order of things in this 
country made to correspond with the actual facts. 
The Indians must be driven into suing for treaties of 
peace. If you admit their right to the land, buy it 
from them. When they come to you for peace, let 
them have it on generous terms, and then compel 
them to observe it with religious faith. A little sever- 
ity may be necessary in the outset; for the Cheyenne 
has never yet felt the white man's power ; but a policy 
at once clear, clement and firm, would soon become 
intelligible to these sons of the prairie. If the policy 
of leaving things alone, and letting the trader, emi- 
grant, and traveller, push their way through these 
deserts, is continued, the American will never cease 
to have trouble on their Indian frontiers. 



92 NEW A ME ETC A. 



CHAPTER XI. 



CITY OF THE PLAINS. 



At the head of these rolling prairies stands Denver, 
City of the Plains. 

A few months ago (time runs swiftly in these west- 
ern towns ; two years take you back to the middle 
ages, and a settler of five years' standing is a patriarch) 
Denver was a wifeless city. 

"I tell you, sir," exclaimed a fellow-lodger in the 
wooden shanty known to emigrant and miner as the 
Planter's House, "five years ago, when I first came 
down from the gulches into Denver, I would have 
given a ten-dollar piece to have seen the skirt of a 
servant-girl a mile oflf." 

This fellow was sitting at a lady's feet; a lady of 
middle age and fading charms ; to whom, an hour or 
so afterwards, I said, "Pray, madam, is the gentleman 
who would have given the ten-dollar piece to see the 
skirt of a girl's petticoat, your husband? " 

" Why do you ask, sir? " 

Having had no particular reason for my query, I 
replied, with a bow, "Well, madam, I was rather 
hoping that so good a lover had met with a bright 
reward." 

"No," she answered with a smile, "I am not his 
wife ; though I might be to-morrow if I would. He 
has just buried one lady, and he wants to try on with 
a second." 



CITY OF THE PLAINS. 93 

On alighting at the Planter's House I noticed, 
swinging near the door, a little sign, on which these 
words were painted — 

" Madame Mortimek, 

" Clairvoyant Physician." 

In the shop-windows of Main Street I had seen a hand- 
bill, which appeared, from its ragged look, to have 
done service in some other house, of dirty habits, an- 
nouncing that the celebrated Madame Mortimer had 
arrived in Denver, and might be consulted daily (no 
address being given) on what I may, perhaps, be al- 
lowed to call diseases of the heart. Her room in the 
hotel stood next in the corridor to mine, and as a large 
panel over her door (door discreetly locked) leading 
from my room into hers was open, I could at any time 
of the last three or four nights and days have made 
her personal acquaintance by simply standing on tip- 
toe and looking through. Strange to say, I have not 
thought of arming myself against the wiles of my 
neighbor, even by a cursory inspection of her camp ; 
and when I spoke just now to the faded woman in the 
parlor, I was utterl}' unaware that she was the cele- 
brated Madame Mortimer, who could tell everybody's 
fortune — show every man a portrait of his future wife, 
every woman a picture of her future husband — for 
the low charge of two dollars per head ! 

Poor sorceress? there is not much poetic charm in 
her; not a tradition of the art, the grace, and supple- 
ness of spirit which made the genuine witch. This 
afternoon, in passing my door in the lobby, with the 
adoring lover at her heels, she saw me looking on the 
ground for something. It was only a match, which I 
had dropped while drawing on the wall for a light. 



94 NEW AMERICA. 

"You have lost something? " 

" Madame, it is only a match ; can you make me a 
new one?" said I, looking from her face to that of 
the miner. 

"We do not make matches in Denver," she replied, 
in the saddest spirit. 

" Surely they cannot help making them wherever 
you are," I said with a bow. 

She looked quite blank, though the lover began to 
chuckle. "How?" she asked, still simpering. 

"How! by gift and grace of heaven, where all 
matches are made." 

At last she smiled. "Ha! thank you, sir; I like 
that, and will keep it; " on which she and the lover 
slipt away into the parlor, and I lit my cigar with a 
fusee. Yet this poor sorceress is a feature in the City 
of the Plains ; and I am told that, while the bloom of 
her coming was fresh among these mining men, the 
curiosity about her was keen, the flow of dollars into 
her pocket was steady. But the charm appears to be 
nearly spent; the landlord, properly protected by a 
wife, and not being of a romantic turn, is said to be 
dunning her for bills ; and she is consequently being 
driven by adverse fates to trifle with the affections on 
her own account. Her life in this city of rakes and 
gamblers must have been a very hard one ; the nearest 
town is six hundred njiles away ; the price of a seat 
in the stage is about two hundred dollars. Poor artist 
in fate — the stars appear to be very hard on her just 
now. 

[Note. On my return from Salt Lake City to Den- 
ver, I found that her little sign had been removed from 
the house-front, and I began to fear that she had been 
driven oft" by adverse angels to either Leavenworth or 
Omaha; but in skipping upstairs to my room, I met 



CITY OF THE PLAINS. - 95 

the poor creature on the landing-stage, and made her 
my politest bow. From a friend in the house I learned 
that she had retired from her profession into domestic 
life; but only, I am grieved to add, with what, in this 
City of the Plains, is described as the brevet rank of 
lady and wife.) 

The men of Denver, even those of the higher 
classes, though they have many strong qualities — 
bravery, perseverance, generosity, enterprise, endur- 
ance — heroic qualities of the old JSTorse gods — are 
also, not unlike the old Norse gods, exceedingly frail 
in morals; and where you see the tone of society weak, 
you may always expect to find aversion to marriage, 
both as a sentiment and as an institution, somewhat 
strong. Men who have lived alone^' away from the 
influence of mothers and sisters, have generally but 
a faint belief in the personal virtue and fidelity of 
women ; and apart from the lack of belief in woman, 
which ought to be a true religion in the heart of every 
man, the desire for a fixed connection and a settled 
home will hardly ever spring up. Men may like the 
society of women, and yet not care to encumber 
themselves for life. The worst of men expect, when 
they marry, to obtain the best of wives ; but the best 
of women do not quit New England and Pennsyl- 
vania for Colorado. Hence it is a saying in Denver, — 
a saying confirmed by practice, that in these western 
cities, though few of the miners have wives, you will 
not find many among them who can be truly de- 
scribed as marrying men. 

On any terms short of marriage these lusty fellows 
may be caught by a female snare. They take very 
freely to the charms of negresses and squaws. One 
of the richest men of this city, whose name I forbear 
to give, has just gone up into the mountains with a 



96 NEW AMERICA. 

couple of Cheyenne wives. Your young Norse gods 
are nervously afraid of entering a Christian church. 

Denver is a city of four thousand people ; with ten 
or twelve streets laid out ; with two hotels, a bank, a 
theatre, half a dozen chapels, fifty gambling-houses, 
and a hundred grog-shops. As you wander about 
these hot and dirty streets, you seem to be walking 
in a city of demons. 

Every fifth house appears to be a bar, a whisky- 
shop, a lager-beer saloon ; every tenth house appears 
to be either a brothel or a gaming-house ; very often 
both in one. In these horrible dens a man's life is 
of no more worth than a dog's. Until a couple of 
years ago, when a change for the better began, it was 
quite usual for honest folks to be awakened from 
their sleep by the noise of exploding guns ; and when 
daylight came, to find that a dead body had been 
tossed from a window into the street. No inquiry was 
ever made into the cause of death. Decent people 
merely said, " Well, there is one sinner less in Den- 
ver, and may his murderer meet his match to- 
morrow!" 

Thanks to "William Gilpin, founder of Colorado, 
and governor elect, aided by a Vigilance Committee ; 
thanks also to the wholesome dread which unruly 
spirits have conceived of the quick eye :.nd resolute 
hand of Sherift' Wilson ; thanks, more than all, to the 
presence of a few American and English ladies in the 
streets of Denver, the manners of this mining pande- 
monium have begun to change. English women who 
have been here two or three years, assure me it is 
greatly alterec\ Of course Gilpin is opposed — in the- 
ory, at least — to all such jurisdiction as that exercised 
by the Vigilance Committee ; but for the moment, the 
society of this city is unsettled, justice is blind and 



CITY OF THE PLAINS. 97 

lame, while violence is alert and strong; and the Vigi- 
lance Committee, a secret irresponsible board, acting 
above all law, especially in the matter of life and 
death, has to keep things going by means of the re- 
volver and the rope. No one knows by name the 
members of this stern tribunal ; every rich, every ac- 
tive man in the place is thought to be of it; and you 
may hear, in confidential whispers, the names of per- 
sons who are supposed to be its leaders, ministers, 
and executioners. The association is secret, its agents 
are many, and nothing, I am told, escapes the knowl- 
edge, hardly anything escapes the action, of this 
dread, irresponsible court. A man disappears from 
the town: — it is an offence to inquire about him; you 
see men shrug their shoulders ; perhaps you hear the 
mysterious words — "gone up." Gone up, in the 
slang of Denver, means gone up a tree — that is to 
say, a cotton-tree — by which is meant a particular 
cotton-tree growing on the town creek. In plain 
English, the man is said to have been hung. This 
secret committee holds its sittings in the night, and 
the time for its executions is in the silent hours be- 
tween twelve and two, when honest people should be 
all asleep in their beds. Sometimes, when the store- 
keepers open their doors in Main Street, they find a 
corpse dangling on a branch; but commonly the body 
is cut down before dawn, removed to a suburb, where 
it is thrown into a hole like that of a d^ad dog. In 
most cases, the place of burial is kept a secret from 
the people, so that no legal evidence of death can be 
found. 

Swearing, fighting, drinking, like the old Norse 

gods, a few thousand men, for the most part wifeless 

and childless, are engaged, in these upper parts of the 

Prairie, in founding an empire. The expression is 

9 



98 ^^w ami: BIG A. 

"William Gilpin's pet phrase; but the congregation of 
young Norse gods who drink, and swear, and fight 
along these roads, are comically unaware of the glori- 
ous work in which they are engaged. 

"Well, sir," said to me, one day, a burly stranger, 
all boots and beard, with a merry mouth and auda- 
cious eye; "well, what do you think of our Western 
boys?" 

Remembering Gilpin, and wishing to be safe and 
complimentary, I replied, " You are making an em- 
pire." "Eh? " he asked, not understanding me, and 
fancying I was laughing in my sleeve — a liberty which 
your Western boy dislikes — he brought his hand, in- 
stinctively, a little nearer to his bowie-knife. " You 
are making an empire ? " I put in once again, but by 
way of inquiry this time, so as to guard against giving 
offence and receiving a stab. 

"I don't know about that," said he, relaxing his 
grim expression, and moving his hand from his belt; 
" but I am making money." 

Gilpin, I dare say, would have laughed, and said it 
was all the same. 

William Gilpin is perhaps the most noticeable man 
on the Plains, just as Brigham Young is the most 
noticeable in the Salt Lake Valley; and it would 
hardly be a figure of speech to say that his ofiice in 
Denver (a small room in the Planter's House, which 
serves him for a bedroom, for a library, for a hall of 
audience, for a workshop, and the upper ten thousand 
of Colorado, generally, for a spittoon) is the high 
school of politics for the gold regions and the moun- 
tain districts. By birth, Gilpin is a Pennsylvanian ; 
by nature and habit, a state founder. Descending 
from one of the best Quaker families of his State, (his 
ancestor was the Gilpin who came out with Penn and 



CITY OF THE PLAINS. 99 

Logan,) tanght by Instory the need of that large and 
graceful tolerance of religious sentiment which Penn 
displayed in the court of Charles the Second, which 
the Friends have put into practice on the Susque- 
hanna, and armed by nature with abundant gifts of 
genius, — patience, insight, eloquence, enthusiasm, — 
he has played, and he is now playing, a singular and 
dramatic part in this western country. He describes 
himself to me as in sympathy a Quaker-Catholic: that 
is to say, as a man who embraces in his single person 
the extremes of religious thought — the feeling of per- 
sonality with the dogma of authority — the laxest forms 
of liberty with the sternest canons of order ; an unu- 
sual blending of sentiments and sympathies, one not 
made in a day, not springing from an individual 
whimsy, but the result of much history, of a long 
family tradition, and nowhere, perhaps, to be found 
in this generation except on the frontier-land which 
unites Quaker Pennsylvania with Catholic Delaware. 
Gilpin abounds in apparent contradictions. A Qua- 
ker, he is also a soldier — a West-Pointer — and of 
singular distinction in his craft. He bore a prominent 
part in the Mexican war; was the youngest man in the 
army who attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel ; and 
but for his resignation, on moving out West, would 
have been the superior officer of Grant and Sherman. 
It is a happy circumstance for him that no call of duty 
made it necessary for him to hold prominent command 
against any section of his countrymen during the civil 
war. Gilpin's work is in another field, in the Great 
West, of which he is the champion and the idol; and 
which he has given his mind to explore, to advertise, 
to settle, and to subdue. 

Under this man's sway, the city is changed, and is 
changing fast ; yet, if I may believe the witnesses, the 



100 ^^^V AMERICA. 

advent of a dozen English and American ladies, who 
came out with their husbands, has done far more for 
Denver than the genius and eloquence of William 
Gilpin. A lady is a power in this country. From the 
day when a silk dress and a lace shawl were seen in 
Main Street, that thoroughfare became passably clean 
and quiet; oaths were less frequently heard; knives 
were less frequently drawn ; pistols were less fre- 
quently fired. None of these things have ceased; far, 
very tar, is Denver yet from peace ; but the young 
Norse gods have begun to feel rather ashamed of 
swearing in a lady's presence, and of drawing their 
knives before a lady's face. 

Slowly, but safely, the improvement has been brought 
about. At first, the ladies had a very bad time, as 
their idiom runs. They feared to associate with each 
other; every woman suspected her neighbor of being 
little better than she should be. Things are safer 
now ; and I can testify, from experience, that Denver 
has a very charming, though a very limited society of 
the better sex. 




ROBERT WILSON, SHERIFF OF DENVER. 



PRAIRIE JUSTICE. 101 



CHAPTER XII. 



PRAIRIE JUSTICE. 



The chief executive officer of this city is Robert 
Wilson, sheriff, auctioneer, unci justice of the peace; 
though he woukl hardly be recognized in Colorado 
under such a description. As Quintus Horatius Flac- 
cus, poet and good-fellow, is only known as Horace, so 
Robert Wilson, sheriff and auctioneer, is only known as 
Bob, in polite society as Bob Wilson. The Sheriff, who 
is said, like our Judge Popham of immortal memory, 
to have been a gambler, if nothing worse, in his wild 
youth, is still a young-looking man of forty or forty- 
two ; a square, strong-chested fellow, low in stature, 
with a head like the Olympian Jove's. The stories 
told in the Prairies of this man's daring make the 
blood" freeze, the flesh creep, and the pulse gallop. 
To-day he came and sat with me for hours, talking of 
the city and the territory in which his fortunes are all 
bound up. One of his tales was that of his capture of 
three horse-stealers. 

According to the code in fashion, here in Denver, 
murder is a comparatively slight offence. Until two 
or three years ago, assassination — incidental, not de- 
liberate assassination — was a crime of every day. At 
the door of some gambling-house — and every tenth 
house in Main Street *was a gambling-house, openly 
kept, with the stimulants of drinking, singing, and 
much worse — it was a common thing to find a dead 
9* 



102 NEW AMERICA. 

man in the streets each daybreak. A fight had taken 
place over the roulette-table; pistols had been drawn; 
and the fellow who was slowest with his weapon had 
gone down. No one thought of searching into the 
affray. A rufiian had been shot, and the ci'ty consid- 
ered itself free of so much waste. Human life is here 
of no account; and what man likes to bring down 
upon himself the vengeance of a horde of reckless 
devils by seeking too particularly into the cause of a 
fellow's death? 

A lady, whom I met in. Denver, wife of an ex- 
mayor of that city, told me that when she first came 
out into the West, four or five years ago, there were 
sixty persons lying in the little gi'ave-yard, excluding 
criminals, not one of whom had died a natural death. 
Exact inquiry told me this account was somewhat 
beyond the mark; but her statement showed the be- 
lief still current in the best houses; and indeed it was 
only a little beyond the truth. Men quarrel in the 
streets and fight, but no one dreams of going to the 
help of the weaker side. One night, when I was 
writing in my room, a pistol-shot exploded near my 
window, and, on looking out, I saw a man writhing 
on the ground. In a few moments he was carried off' 
by his comrades; no one followed his assailant; and I 
heard next day, that the assassin was not in custody, 
and that no one knew for certain where he was. Op- 
posite my window there is a well, at which two sol- 
diers were drinking-water late at night; an English 
gentleman, standing on the balcony of the Planter's 
House, heard one soldier say to the other, "Look, 
there is a cobbler, bang at him !" on which his com- 
rade raised his piece and fired. Poor Crispin jumped 
up into his shop and shut the door; he had a near 
escape with life, for the ball had gone through the 



PRATRTE JUSTICE. lOS 

boarding of his house, and lodged itself in the oppo- 
site wall. Nothing was done to those two soldiers ; 
and every one to whom I expressed my surprise at 
such negligence on the part of their commanding 
officers, marvelled at my surprise. 

Unless a ruffian is known to have killed half a 
dozen people, and to have got, as it were, niurder on 
the brain, he is almost safe from trouble in these 
western plains. A notorious murderer lived near 
Central City ; it was known that he had shot six or 
seven men ; but no one thought of interfering with 
him on account of his crimes until he was taken red- 
handed in the very act. Some persons fancied he 
was heartily sorry for what he had done, and he him- 
self, Avhen tossing off cocktails with his rough com- 
panions, used to say he was sick of shedding blood. 

One day, on riding into Central City, he met a 
friend whom he invited to take a drink. The friend, 
not wishing to be seen any more in such bad com- 
pany, declined the offer, on which the ruffian drew 
his pistol in the public street, in the open day, and 
saying, with a comic swagger of reluctance, " Good 
God, can I never come into town without killing 
some one?" shot his friend through the heart. 
Seized by the indignant crowd, the callous ruffian 
had a stern trial, a short thrift, and a midnight escape 
up the famous cotton-tree in the city ditch. 

But with respect to theft, most of all the theft of 
horses, public opinion is far more strict than it is 
with respect to murder. Horse-stealing is always 
punished by death. Five good horses were one day 
missed from a corral in Denver; and on Wilson being 
consulted as to the probable thieves, the Sheriff's sus- 
picions fell on three mining rowdies, gamblers, and 
thieves, named Brownlee, Smith, and Carter, men 



104 NEW AMU HI a A. 

who had recently come into the city from the mines 
and the mountain roads. As inquiry in the slums 
and grog-shops could not find these worthies, Wilson, 
feeling sure that they were the men he wanted, or- 
dered his horse, and, after looking well at his re- 
volver and bowie-knife, jumped into the saddle and 
turned toward the Platte road. The time was early 
spring, when the snow was melting and the water 
high. Coming to the river, he stript and crossed the 
rapids, holding his clothes and pistols above his head, 
and partly swimming his horse across the stream. 
Riding on all day, all night, he came upon the thieves 
on a lonely prairie, one hundred and fifty miles from 
Denver, and five miles from the nearest ranch. Carter 
and Smith were each leading a horse, in addition to 
the one he rode; Brownlee rode alone, bringing up 
the rear. It was early day when he came up with 
them, and as they did not know him by sight, he en- 
tered into conversation, chiefly with Brownlee, pass- 
ing himself off with the robbers as a broken miner 
going home to the States; and riding with them from 
eight o'clock until twelve in the hope of meeting 
either the public stage, or some party of traders who 
could lend him help. But he looked in vain. At 
noon he saw that no assistance could be got that day, 
and feeling that he must do his perilous work alone, 
he suddenly changed his air and voice, and reigning 
in his horse, said, — 

" Gentlemen, we have gone far enough ; we must 
turn back." 

"Who the h are you?" shouted Brownlee, 

drawing his weapon. 

"Bob Wilson," said the Sheriff", quietly; "come to 
fetch you back to Denver. You are accused of steal- 
ing three horses. Give up your arms, and you shall 
be fairly tried." 



PRAIRIE JUSTICE. 105 

"You go to h !" roared Brownlee, raising his 

pistol; but before he could draw the trigger, a slug 
was in his brain, and he tumbled to the ground with 
the imprecation hot upon his lips. Smith and Carter, 
hearing the loud words behind them followed by the 
exploding pistol, turned round suddenly in their sad- 
dles and got ready to fire ; but in the confusion Smith 
let drop his piece ; and in an eye-blink, Carter fell 
to the ground, dead as the dust upon which he lay. 
Smith, who had jumped down from his horse to get 
his pistol, now threw up his hands. 

" Come here," cried Wilson, to the surviving thief; 
" hold my horse ; if you stir a limb, I fire ; you see I 
am not likely to miss my mark." 

" You shoot very clean, sir," answered the trembling 
rutfian. 

"Now, mind me," said the Sheriff"; "I shall take 
you and these horses back to Denver; if you have 
stolen them, so much the worse for you ; if not, you 
are all square; any way, you shall have a fair trial." 

Wilson then picked up the three pistols, all of them 
loaded and capped. "I hesitated for a moment," he 
said to me, in this part of his tale, " whether to draw 
the charges ; on second thought I resolved to keep 
them as they were, as no one could tell what might 
happen," Tying the three pistols in a handkerchief, 
and carefully reloading his own revolver, he then 
bade Smith get on one of the horses, to which he 
then made the fellow fast by ropes passed round his 
legs. Leaving the two dead men on the ground, and 
turning the horses loose to graze, Wilson led him cap- 
tive along the road as far back as the ranch. A 
French settler, with an English wife, lived at this 
prairie ranch, and on Wilson stating who he was, and 
what his prisoner was more than suspected of being, 



106 N^EW AMERICA. 

the brave couple entered into his plans. After lash- 
ing Smith to a post, and telling the woman to shoot 
him dead if he struggled to get free (an order which 
her husband said she would certainly carry out, 
should the need for it arise), the two men rode back 
to the scene of execution, buried the two bodies, re- 
covered the four horses, and brought away many arti- 
cles from the dead men's pockets, which might serve 
to identify them in evidence. Returning to the ranch, 
they found the woman on guard, and Smith in despair. 
In their absence, Smith had used all his arts of appeal 
upon the woman ; he had appealed to her pity, to her 
vanity," to her avarice. At length she had been forced 
to tell him that she would hear no more, that if he 
spoke again she would fire into his mouth. Then he 
grew white and silent. Next day brought the Sheriff 
and his prisoner to Denver, when Smith had a short 
shrift and a violent escape up the historical tree. 



SIERRA MADRE. 107 



CHAPTER Xm. 



SIERRA MADRE. 



From Denver City up to Bridger's Pass, the highest 
point of the Sierra Madre (Mother Crest, or saw-line) 
over which trapper and trader have worn a track, the 
ascent is easy as to gradients, though it may be most 
uneasy in the matter of ruts, creeks, sand and stones. 
So far a traveller finds but little difference between 
the mountains and the prairies, which are also rolling 
uplands, rising between Leavenworth and Denver up- 
wards of four thousand feet, the beight of Snowdon 
above the sea. Yet Bridger's Pass is the water-part- 
ing of a great continent ; the eastern slopes shedding 
their snow and rain towards the Atlantic Ocean, the 
western slopes towards the Pacific Ocean. 

For ninety miles the road runs quietly north of 
Denver, along the base of a lower range of mountains 
known as the Black Hills, in search of an opening 
through the towering wall of rock and snow. At 
Stonewall, near Virginia Dale, it finds a gorge, or 
canyon, as the people call it, leading into a pretty 
woodland district, full of springs and streamlets, in 
which the trout are so abundant you may catch them 
in a creel. The scenery is not yet wild and grand, 
though it is picturesque, from the strange rock forma- 
tion and the brilliance of its body color. The mo- 
ment you enter into the mountain land, you see why 



108 NEW AMERICA. 

the Spaniards called it Colorado. The prevailing tint 
of rock, of soil, of tree (especially in the fall), is red. 

Between Virginia Dale and Willow Springs, the 
country lying south of our track may be called beau- 
tiful. The road runs high, commanding a sweep of 
many valleys, bright with welcome foliage, therefore 
blessed with water ; broken by cols and ridges, with 
long dark intervals of space between ; the whole land- 
scape crowned in the distance by the mighty and 
irregular range from Long's Peak to Pike's Peak. 
This is a true Swiss scene ; the hills being clothed 
with pine, the summits capped with snow; a scene as 
striking in its natural features as the more famous 
view of the' Oberland Alps from Berne, 

At Laramie w^e lose this mountain picture. Low 
mounds of earth and sand, covered with the wild sage, 
peopled by prairie dogs, coyotes, and owls, shut out 
the snow-line from our sight. 

Here and there along the track we pass the shoulder, 
we cross the summit, of a height which may be called 
a mountain (out of courtesy) such as Elk Mountain, 
the Medicine Bow Mountain, and the ridge of North 
Platte, before we descend upon Sage Creek and Pine 
Grove ; but we see no peaks, we climb no alps ; jog 
jog, — trot trot, — grind grind, — we rumble in the 
light wagon over stones, over grass, over sand, across 
creeks and water-ruts, with a uniform misery, day 
after night, night after day, that would murder any 
man outright, from sheer exhaustion of his animal 
spirits, were it not for the strong reaction caused by 
the ever-expected appearance of Ute, Cheyenne, and 
Sioux. 

The life is hard at its best, intolerable at its average. 
Only twice in the night and day we are allowed. to 
eat. The food is bad, the water worse, the cooking 



SIERRA MADRE. 109 

worst. Vegetables there are none. Milk, tea, butter, 
beef, mutton, are commonly wanting. Even the talis- 
manic letters from New York are useless in these high 
and desolate Passes through the sage-fields. If there 
were food it would be sold to us ; but, as a rule, there 
is simply none at all. Hot dough, which they call 
cake, you may have, though you will find it hard to 
eat, impossible to digest — you who are not to the ma- 
terial and the method born, and who have been pam- 
pered and spoiled by the chefs in Pall Mall. N"o beer, 
no spirit, sometimes no salt, can be found. As a lux- 
ury, you may get dried elk and butfalo-flesh, seasoned 
with a dash of powder ; and for these horrid dainties 
you are charged a dollar and a half, in some places 
two dollars, per meal. 

But if the life seems hard to us, who get through it 
in a dozen days and nights, what must it prove to the 
trapper, the teamster, the emigrant? Spite of its 
perils and privations, this mountain road is alive with 
trains of people going to and fro between the River 
and Salt Lake. Hundreds of men, thousands of oxen, 
mules, and horses, climb these desolate tracks ; bear- 
ing with them, in light mountain wagons built for the 
purpose, the produce of eastern fields and cities, — 
green apples, dried corn, salt beef, flour, meal, potted 
fruits and meats, — as well as tea, tobacco, coffee, rice, 
sugar, and a multitude of dry goods, from caps and 
shoes to coffin-plates and shrouds, — bearing them to 
the mining districts of Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Mon- 
tana, where such things find a ready sale. The train- 
men march in bands for safety, and a train from Leav- 
enworth to Salt Lake resembles in many ways the 
great caravan of commerce on a S^^rian road. A trader 
on the river, — at Onia, in Nebraska, — at Leaven- 
worth, in Kansas, — hears, or perhaps suspects, that 
10 



110 NEW AMERICA. 

some article, such as tea, cotton, fruits, — it may be 
molasses, tanned leather, — is running short in the 
mountains, and that in a few weeks a demand for it is 
likely to spring up at high rates. Buying in a good 
market, he takes the risk of being wrong in his con- 
jecture. With his one prime article of trade he com- 
bines a dozen minor articles ; say, with a huge bulk 
of tea, a little cutlery, a little claret, a little quinine 
and other drugs, store of blankets and gauntlets, — 
perhaps a thousand pairs of top-boots. He buys fifty 
or sixty light wagons, with a dozen oxen to each 
wagon ; engages a train boss, or captain, hires about a 
hundred men, — packs up his goods, — and sends the 
caravan off into the plains. No actuary in his senses 
would ensure the arrival of that train in Denver, in 
Salt Lake, in Virginia City. The journey is consid- 
ered as an adventure. The men who go with it must 
be excellent shots, thoroughly well armed ; but they 
are not expected to defend their cargo against the In- 
dians; and should the red-skin plunderers show in 
force, the teamsters are allowed to cut the traces, 
mount on the fleetest mules, and fly to the nearest 
post or station, leaving their wagon, stock, and cargo, 
to be plundered as the Indians list. ISTo man likes his 
poll to be scalped; and the teamster, with a wife and 
child, perhaps, lying in Omaha, in Leavenworth, loves 
to keep his hair untouched. Murder will happen in 
the best conducted trains; but the bravest Western 
boy sets his life above a hundred chests of tea and a 
thousand sacks of flour. 

Some of these trains haul passengers along the 
road at the rate of fifty dollars a-head for the journey 
— (in the stage it is two hundred and fifty) — the 
passenger finding himself in food, herding with the 
teamsters, and cooking his own meals. 



SIERRA MADRE. \\\ 

The trip, when it is done at all, is made in about 
ninety days, from the River to Salt Lake; a journey 
of more than twelve hundred miles ; with the city of 
Denver as a resting-place, six hundred miles from the 
starting-point and from the end. The average rate is 
fourteen or fifteen miles a day ; though some of the 
train-men will push through twenty miles on the 
plains. 

Four or five hours in the middle of the day .they 
rest to let the cattle graze, and to cook their food ; at 
nightfall they encamp near to fresh water, if possible 
in the vicinity of a little wood. They corral the 
wagons; that is to say, they set them in the form of 
an ellipse, open only at one end, for safety ; each 
wagon locked against its neighbor, overlapping it by 
a third of the length, like the scales on plate armor ; 
this ellipse being the form of defence against Indian 
attack, which long experience in frontier warfare had 
proved to the old Mexican traders in these regions to 
be the most eifective shield. When the wagons are 
corralled, the oxen are turned loose to graze, the men 
begin to cut and break wood, the women and children 
(if there be any in the party) light the fires, fetch 
water from the spring or creek, boil the kettle, and 
bake the evening bread. Some of the young men, 
expert with the rifle, tramp across gully and creek in 
search of plover, prairie dog, and chicken ; and on 
lucky days these hunters may chance to fall upon 
antelope and elk. Luck going with them, the even- 
ing closes Avith a feast. Others hunt for rattle-snakes, 
and kill them ; also for stra^^ coyotes and wolves, many 
of which, driven mad by hunger, infest the neighbor- 
hood of a camp. I saw a huge gray wolf shot within 
two yards of a wagon, which had been lifted from the 
wheels and set on the ground, and in which lay a 



112 NEW AMERICA. 

sleeping child. "When supper is done, the oxen, hav- 
ing had their mouthful of bunch-grass, are driven for 
safety into the corral of wagons; or otherwise the 
morning light would haply find them miles away in 
an Indian camp. A song, a story, perhaps a dance, 
winds up the weary day. In warm weather, train-folks 
sleep in the wagons, to escape the rattle-snakes and 
wolves. When the snow is deep in the gully, when 
the wind comes sweeping down the ice, a wagon on 
wheels is too cold for a bed, and the train-men prefer 
a blanket on the ground, with a whisky-bottle for a 
pillow. Long before dawn they are up and about; 
yoking the cattle, hitching up the wagons, swallowing 
their morning meal. Sunrise finds them plodding on 
the road. 

Sometimes the owner travels with his train; not 
often ; for the boss can manage these unruly, drunken, 
quarrelling teamsters better than the actual owner of 
the cargo. If the rations should run short,- if the 
whisky should turn out bad, if the wagons should 
break down, the boss can join chorus with the team- 
sters in swearing at his chief. A strong outburst of 
abuse is said to do the men much good ; and as the 
owner does not hear it, he is none the worse. When 
the chief is present,, every man in the train has a com- 
plaint to make ; so that time is lost by the way, and a 
spirit of insubordination shows itself in the camp. 
When anything goes wrong, — and every day, in such 
a country, something must go wrong, — if the real 
master is not present, the boss can say, lie cannot help 
it, they are all in one boat, and they must make the 
best of a bad job. In this way — grumbling, drink- 
ing, fighting — they get through the mountain-passes; ■ 
to end their ninety days of stern privations by a week's 
debauchery, either in the secret slums of Salt Lake 
Citv, or in the solitude of some mountain ranch. 



S IE BE A MAD RE. 113 

The owner travels in the mail, more swiftly, not 
more pleasantly, than his servants, and is ready in 
Denver, in Salt Lake, in Virginia City, to receive his 
wagons; when he may sell the whole train, tea, drugs, 
hosiery, wagons, oxen, in a lump or lumps. 

The ranch-men are of two classes : (1), the enter- 
prising class, who go out into the mountains — much 
as eastern farmers go into the backwoods — to clear 
the ground, to grow a little corn, to feed a few sheep 
and kine; fighting the battle of life, on one side 
against reluctant nature, on the other side against hos- 
tile red-skins ; living on bad food and bad water, in 
the hope of getting a first footing on the unoccupied 
soil, and laying the foundation of a fortune for their 
sons and grandsons ; (2), the more reckless class, who 
build a log-hut by the roadside, in the highway of 
teamster and emigrant, with a view of selling whisky 
and cordials to the passers-by, and even to the tipsy 
Cheyenne and Sioux, making in a brief season a for- 
tune for themselves. Both classes lead a life of much 
peril and privation. Even more than the teamster 
and the emigrant, the ranch-man bears his life in the 
palm of his hand ; for every rufiian on the road who 
calls for drink, with a bowie-knife and a revolver in 
his belt, has the quick, quarrelsome spirit of the 
Western boy, and often wants whisky to drink when 
he has never a dollar in his pouch to pay for the 
delicious dram. 

But the chief peril comes to the ranch-man in the 
shape of Indians ; most of all, when a powerful tribe, 
like that of the Sioux, that of the Pawnees, sets out 
on the war-path. The red-skin loves whisky more 
than he loves either wife or child ; in peace he will 
sell anything to obtain his darling poison ; his papoose, 
his squaw, even his captive in war: but when a Sioux 
10* 



114 NEW AMERICA. 

has put the red paint on his cheek, and slung the 
scalping-knife to his side, he no longer thinks of 
buying his dose of fire-water from the white man ; he 
sweeps down upon the ranch, takes it by force, and 
with it, not unfrequently, the life of its vendor. 

Yet the spirit of gain tempts the ranch-man to re- 
build his burnt shed, to replenish his plundered store. 
If he lives through two or three seasons of successful 
trade in whisky and tobacco, he is rich. Paddy Blake, 
an Irishman, from Virginia city, keeps a ranch near 
the summit of Bridger's Pass, in a field which is the 
very model of desolation. He lives at Fort Laramie; 
by trade he is a suttler ; but he finds it pay better to 
sell bad spirits to the teamsters at three dollars a 
bottle, and cake-tobacco for chewing at six dollars a 
pound, than to deal in decent stores among soldiers 
and civilians at the fort. A small log-hut contains 
his stock of poisons, which he vends to the passer-b}^, 
including Utes and Cheyennes, about four months in 
the year, while the roads are open and the snow is oiF 
the ground ; taking buttalo and beaver skins from the 
red men, dollars and kind (the kind too often stolen) 
from the whites. 

Along this mountain road, in every train, among 
the callous teamsters, among the raw emigrants, among 
the passing strangers, among the resident stockmen, 
there is one topic of conversation night and day, — the 
Indians. Every red man moves in this region with 
the scalping-knife in his hand. Spottiswood, one of 
the smart agents of the Overland mail, told me that 
he saw a white man taken by the Sioux from his 
wagon, and burnt to death on a pile of bacon. The 
antelope-hunter of Virginia Dale was killed only a few 
weeks ago. Between Elk Mountain and Sulphur 
Spring a train was stopped by Cheyennes, and eighteen 



SIEIiBA MAD RE. 115 

men, women, and cliildren, were massacred and muti- 
lated. Two young girls were carried oiF, and, after 
being much abused by the Indians, were sent into 
Fort Laramie, and exchanged for sacks of flour from 
the quartermaster's store. 

Near the top of the first pass, stands a lonely mail- 
station, called, by a pious and permissible Action, Pine 
Grove ; two stockmen occupy the log-hut ; one of 
them, named Jesse Ewing, is the hero of a tale more 
striking than many a deed that has earned the Vic- 
toria Cross. 

In the spring of this year a party of Sioux, then 
out on the war-path, came to Pine Grove, and by acci- 
dent found Jesse there alone. As usual, they made 
free with what was not their own; ate up the bread 
and coffee, the dried elk, and the salt bacon ; and 
having gorged their stomachs, they told Jesse to light 
a big fire, as they meant to roast him alive. Burning 
their captives is a common pastime Avith the Sioux; 
not their Pawnee enemies only, but the Swaps (as 
they call the Yengees) or Pale-faces also. Up to this 
time Jesse had contrived to keep his knife and his 
revolver hidden in his clothes, and neither of these 
weapons being seen, the Indians supposed that he was 
quite unarmed and at their mercy. At first, he refused 
to light a fire, knowing they would carry out their 
threat; and on their saying they would set their 
squaws to skin him if he did not swiftly obey their 
chief, he said he could not make a big fire unless he 
were allowed to fetch straw and fagots from the 
stable. The fact being obvious to the Sioux, he was 
told to go and fetch tliem, two of the Indians going 
out into the night to see him do it; one entering the 
stable with him, the second standing at the door on 
guard. Quick as thought, his knife was in the side 



116 NEW AMERICA. 

of the red man near him ; a second later a slug was 
in the brain of the one outside. The firing brought 
out all the yelping band; but Jesse, swift as an ante- 
lope, leaped into a creek, got under some trees and 
stones, in a place which he knew very well, and lay 
there under cover, still as the dead,'while the Sioux, 
infuriated by their sudden loss, kept up for hours 
around big hiding-place their wild and horrible yep, 
yep. The night was intensely cold; he had no shoes; 
no coat: worse than all else, the snow began to fall, 
so that he could not stir without leaving traces of his 
feet along the ground. Happily for him, snow slob- 
bers and numbs an Indian's feet as quickly as it chills 
a Yengee's. He could hear the Sioux cr3-ing out 
against the cold ; after a few hours he found that his 
enemies were turning their faces eastward. Slowly, 
the noise of feet and voices bore away ; the Indians 
taking the path towards Sage Creek; and when the 
air was a little still, Jesse stole from his covert, and 
ran for his life to the home-station at Sulphur Springs, 
where he arrived at daybreak, and obtained from his 
comrades of the road the welcome relief of food and 
fire. 

This brave boy has come back to Pine Grove ; a 
fact which I mention with regret, since the Indians 
are again menacing the road; and if they come down 
in strength, Jesse will be marked in their score of 
venareance as one of the first to fall. 



BITTER GREEK. II7 



CHAPTER XIV. 

BITTER CREEK. 

The Camp of Peaks, composing the Sierra Madre, 
having their crown and centre in Fremont's Peak, 
three hundred feet above the height of Monte Rosa, 
shed from their snowy sides three water-lines : on the 
eastern side, towards the Mississippi and the Pacific 
Ocean; on the western side towards the Cohimbia 
River and the Pacific Ocean ; on the southern side to- 
wards the Colorado River and the Gulf of California. 
Southwestward of this Peak rises the Wasatch chain, 
shutting out from these systems of rain-flow the de- 
pression known as the Valley of Utah and the Great 
Salt Lake. Between the two great mountain chains 
of the Sierra Madre and the Wasatch lies the Bitter 
Creek country, one of the most sterile spots on the 
surface of this earth. 

This wild Sahara, measuring it from Sulphur Springs 
to Green River, is one hundred and thirty-five miles in 
width. It is a region of sand and stones, without a 
tree, w^ithout a shrub, without a spring of fresh water. 
Bones of elk and antelope, of horse and bullock, strew 
the ground. Here and there, more thickly than else- 
where, you come upon a human grave ; each of which 
has a story known to the mountaineers. This stone is 
the memorial of five stock-men who were murdered by 
the Sioux. Yon pole marks the resting-place of a 
young emigrant girl, who died on her way to the 



118 NEW AMERICA. 

Promised Land. That tree is the gallows of a wretch, 
who was hung by his companions in a drunken brawl. 
The whole track is marked by skeletons and tragedies; 
and visible nature is in sternest harmony with the work 
of man. A little wild sage grows here and there, scat- 
tered in lonely bunches in the midst of a weak and 
stunted grass. The sun-flower all but disappears, at- 
taining, where it grows at all, no more than the size 
of a common daisy. The hills are low, and of a dirty 
yellow tint. A fine white film of soda spots the land- 
scape, here in broad fields, there in bright patches, 
which the unused eye mistakes for frost and snow. 
"When the creek, which lends its bitter name to the 
valley, is full of water, as in early summer, while the 
ice is melting, the taste of that water, though nau- 
seous, may be borne ; but when the creek runs dry, in 
the later summer and the fall, it is utterly abominable 
to man and beast ; rank poison, which inflames the 
bowels and corrupts the blood. Yet men must drink 
it, or they die of thirst ; cattle must drink it, or they 
will die of thirst. The soil is very heavy, the road is 
very bad. A train can hardly cross this Bitter Creek 
country under a week, and many of the emigrant par- 
ties have to endure its stern privations ten or twelve 
days. Oxen cannot pull through the heavy sand, when 
from scanty food and poisonous drink their strength 
has begun to fail. Some fall by the way, and cannot 
be induced to rise ; some simply stagger, and refuse to 
tug their chains. The goad curls round their backs in 
vain ; there is nothing for a teamster to do but draw 
the yoke and let the poor creatures drop into the rear, 
where the wolves and ravens put an end to their mis- 
eries. The path is strewn with skeletons of ox and 
mule. Again and again we meet with trains in the 
Bitter Creek country, in which a third of the oxen are 



BITTER CREEK. 119 

in hospital ; that is to say, have been relieved from 
their labor, thrown on the flank to graze, or left be- 
hind on the chance of their recovery, perhaps in cai-e 
of a lad. "When many animals of a stock fall sick, the 
strain put on the healthy becomes severe, and the 
caravan, unable to go forward, may have to camp for 
a week of rest in most unhealthy ground. 

Lying between the two great ridges of the Rocky 
Mountains, the Bitter Creek country, a valley about 
the average height of Mons Pilatus above the sea, 
is, of course, intensely cold. The saying of the herds- 
men is, that winter ends with July, and begins with 
August. Many of the mules and oxen die of frost, 
especiall}' in the fall, when the burning sun of noon 
is suddenly exchanged for the icy winds of midnight. 
Frost comes upon the cattle unawares, with a soft, 
seductive sense of comfort, so that they seem to bend 
their knees and close their eyes in perfect health ; yet, 
when the morning dawns, it is seen that they will 
never rise again from their bed of sleep. It is much 
the same with men ; who often lie down in their rugs 
and skins on the ground, a little numb, perhaps, in 
the feet; not miserably so, their toes being only just 
touched with the chill of ice ; yet the more knowing 
hands among them feel that they will never find life 
and use in those feet again. I heard of one train cap- 
tain, who, being careful of his men and teams, had 
put them up for the night, near Black Buttes, in a 
time of trouble with the Sioux ; and who, being well 
clothed and mounted, had undertaken, in relief of 
another, to act as their sentinel and guard. All night 
he sat his pony in the cold ; shivering a little, dozing 
a little ; but on the rustling of a leaf, awake, alert, and 
watchful. When daylight came, and the camp began 
to stir, he shouted to one of his drivers, and would 



120 NEW ami: BIG A. 

have drawn his foot from the leather rest, which serves 
the mountaineer instead of a stirrup ; but his leg was 
stifi* and would not obey his will. In his surprise, he 
tried to raise the other leg, but the muscles once more 
refused to answer. When he was lifted down from 
the saddle, his legs were found to have been frozen to 
the knee ; and after three days' agony he expired. 

Nothing is more usual than to see men on the prai- 
ries and in the mountains who have lost either toes or 
fingers, bitten away by frost. 

Hardly less trying to the mountaineers than frost 
and snow, are the sudden storms which rage and howl 
through these lofty plains. On my return from Salt 
Lake City across the Bitter Creek, a storm of snow, of 
sleet and hail, swept down upon us, right in our front, 
hitting us in the face like shot, and soaking us sud- 
denly to the skin. At first we met it bravely, keeping 
our horses to the fore, and making a little progress, 
even in the teeth of this riotous squall. But the 
horses soon gave in. Terrified by the roaring wind, 
chilled by the smiting hail, they stood stone-still; 
dogged, stolid, passive, utterly indififerent to the 
driver's voice and the driver's whip. Taught by his 
long experience, the driver knew when the brutes 
must have their way ; he suddenly wheeled round, as 
though he was about to return, and setting the wagon 
to the fore, put his team under its lee, with their hind- 
quarters only exposed to the pelting storm. In this 
position we remained three hours, until the swirl and 
tumult had gone by ; after which we got down from 
the wagon, shook ourselves dry in the cold night air, 
and with the help of a little cognac and tobacco (taken 
as a medicine) we resumed our journey. 

A train of emigrants, which had to draw up near us, 
and await the tempest's passage, was not so lucky in 



BITTER CREEK. 121 

arrangement as ourselves. The men had stopped their 
caravan as soon as the mules and horses had refused 
to move ; but instead of bracing their frightened ani- 
mals closer to the wagons, they had loosened their 
bands and suftered them to face the elements as they 
pleased. Some of them could not stand this freedom 
from the trace and curb. For a moment they stood 
still; they sniffed the air; they shook with panic; 
then, turning their faces from the wind, they pawed 
the wet ground, bent down their heads and went ofi' 
madly into space ; a regular stampede, in the course 
of which many of the poor creatures would be sure to 
drop down dead from terror and exhaustion. We 
could not see the end of our neighbors' troubles, for 
the night came down between us and their camp, and 
on the instant slackening of the wind, we wheeled the 
wagon round, and trotted on our way. The emigrants 
would have to wait for dawn, to commence their 
search for the wandering mules and horses ; some 
they would find in the nearer creeks, where they hap- 
pened to first shelter from the driving storm ; others 
they would have to follow over ridge and gully, many 
a long mile. Once in motion, with the hail and wind 
beating heavily on their backs, horses will never stop; 
will climb over mountains, rush into rivers, break 
through underwood, until the violence of nature has 
spent itself out. Then they will stand and shiver, 
perhaps droop and die. 

Bullocks, like mules and horses, sufler from these 
storm-frights, and the experienced teamster of the plains 
will yoke them together, and lash them to the wagons 
whenever he sees the sign of a tempest coming on. 
Herding in a corral, hearing the voices of their drivers, 
they are less alarmed than when, loose and alone, they 
break into a stampede ; yet even in a corral, with the 
11 



122 NEW AMEBIC A. 

song of the teamster in their ears, they shake and 
moan, lie clown on the earth and cry, and not unfre- 
quently die of fright. 

In the midst of these terrors and confusions in a 
train — wlien the horses are either strayed or sick, 
when the hoss is husy with his stock, when the team- 
sters are exhausted by fatigue and hunger — the road- 
agents generally fall on the corral and find it an easy 
prey. 

Road-agent is the name applied in the mountains to 
a ruffian who has given up honest work in the store, 
in the mine, in the ranch, for the perils and profits of 
the highway. Many ruined traders, broken gamblers, 
unsuccessful diggers, take to the road, plundering 
trains of their goods, robbing emigrants of their 
mules, and sometimes venturing to attack the mail. 
They are all well armed ; some of them are certain 
shots. No fear of man, and no respect for woman, 
restrain these plunderers from committing the most 
atrocious crimes. Their hands are raised against 
every one who may be expected to have a dollar in 
his purse. Every law which they can break, they 
have already broken ; every outrage which they can 
eftect, they have probably already effected ; so that 
their dregs of life are already due to justice ; and 
nothing they can do will add to the load of guilt which 
they already bear. These plunderers, who roam 
about the tracks in bands of three or five, of ten oi 
twenty, sometimes of thirty or forty, are far more ter- 
rible to the merchant and the emigrant than either 
Sioux or TJte. The Sioux is but a savage, whom the 
white man has a chance of daunting by his pride, of 
deceiving by his craft ; but his brother on the road, 
himself perhaps a trader, a train-man in his happier 



BITTER GREEK. 123 

days, can see through every wile, and measure with a 
glance both his weakness and his strength. 

Many men known to have been road-agents, sus- 
pected of being still connected with the bands, are at 
large ; this man keeping a grog-shop, that man living 
in a ranch, the other man driving the mail. In this 
free western country you cannot ask many questions 
as to character. A steady wrist, a quick eye, a 
prompt invention, are of more importance in a ser- 
vant than the very best testimonials from his recent 
place. Life is too rough for the nicer rules to come 
into play. I saw a fellow in Denver whose name is 
as well known in Colorado as that of Dick Turpin in 
Yorkshire. He is said to have murdered half a dozen 
men ; he is free to come and go, to buy and sell ; no 
one molests him ; fear of his companions, and of 
men who live by crimes like his, being strong enough 
to daunt, for a time, even the Vigilance Committee 
and their daring Sheriff. On my return through the 
Bitter Creek country, I had the honor of riding in 
the mountain wagon with an old road-agent, who 
laughed and joked over his exploits, caring not a jot 
for either sheriff or judge. One of his stories ran as 
follows. He and a wretch like himself, being out on 
the road, had been rather lucky, and having got a 
thousand dollars in greenbacks in their pouch, they 
were making for Denver City, where they hoped to 
enjoy their plunder, when they saw in the distance 
five mounted men, whom my campanion said he knew 
at once to be part of a gang in which he had formerly 
served on terms of share and share. "We are lost 
now," he said to his companion in crime; "these 
men will rob us of our greenbacks, possibly shoot us 
into the bargain, so as not to leave a witness of their 
deed alive." 



124 N^W AMERICA. 

"We shall see," replied his more crafty friend. "I 
know them, and have been out with them ; we must 
get over them as broken-down wretches." 

Smearing themselves with dirt, dragging a long 
face, and looking hungry and miserable, they met 
the five horsemen with the cry, "Give us five dollars, 
captain ; we are broken down and trying to get on to 
Denver, where we '11 find some friends ; give us five 
dollars ! " This cry of distress went straight to the 
highwayman's heart. He tossed my companion the 
greenbacks, telling him to be mum, and then dashed 
on in front of his more suspicious comrades. 

Not long ago, a party of these road-agents robbed 
the imperial mail, with circumstances of unusual 
harshness, even in the mountains. The story of the 
crime is in everybody's mouth as that of the Portliif 
Canyon murder; and is here told mainly from the 
murderer's confession to Sherifi:' Wilson. 

Frank Williams, a man of bad character, but a good 
whip, a good shot, an experienced mountaineer, got 
employment as a driver on the Overland route. On 
one of this man's visits to Salt Lake he made the ac- 
quaintance of one Parker of Atchison, a trader who 
had been doing business in the Mormon city, and 
was about to return with his gains to the River town. 
M'Causland of A^irginia, and two other merchants, 
having with them a large sum of money in gold dust, 
were proposing to go back with Parker in the mail, for 
their mutual safety. These names and facts Parker 
told Frank Williams as they drank together, at the 
same time asking his advice in the matter as a driver 
and a friend. Under Frank Williams' suggestion the 
four men took their places in the stage; they were 
the only passengers that day ; and they made a pros- 
perous journey until they arrived in PortlifiP Canyon, 



BITTER CREEK. 125 

where Parker found Frank, who had gone back from 
Salt Lake City to his accustomed drive. 

In that canyon they were murdered. In a narrow 
gorge of the pass, Frank let his whip fall to the 
ground ; he stopped the coach, and ran backwards to 
pick it up; when a volley of shot came rattling into 
the mail, and three of the men inside of it fell dead. 
Eight fellows in masks rushed up to the mail, pulled 
out the dead and dying, and seized upon their boxes 
with the gold dust and the greenbacks. Parker was 
hurt, though not to his death ; and on seeing Wil- 
liams come back, pistol in hand, he cried out to his 
friend to spare his life. " I am only hipped; help me, 
Frank, and I shall do !" Frank put the pistol to his 
friend's head and blew his brains into the air; not 
daring to allow one witness of his crime to remain 
alive. He then drove into the station, where he re- 
ported that the mail had been robbed, the passengers 
killed. Two men went out with him to find the dead 
bodies, and a search was made from Denver to Salt 
Lake for the assassins. No suspicion fell upon Frank, 
until a few weeks after the robbery and murder, when 
news was brought to Sheriff Wilson by a thief, that 
Frank Williams had left his place on the mail-line, 
and was spending his money rather freely in the 
Gentile grog-shops of Salt Lake. Bob instantly took 
steps to have him watched in those dens ; but w^hile 
he was setting his spies in motion, Williams suddenly 
appeared in the streets of Denver, close to that cotton- 
tree on which the Sheriff looks down from his auc- 
tioneer's throne. Before he had been a day in Den- 
ver, he had bought for himself and his boon-compan- 
ions seven new suits of clothes, had hired a brothel, 
and treated nearly every ruffian in the town to drink. 

One evening he was seized by Wilson, who con- 
11 * 



126 NEW AMEBIC A. 

ducted him to a midnight sitting of the Vigilance 
Committee. What took place in that sitting is un- 
known ; the names of those who were present can be 
only guessed ; but it was evident to every one next 
day that Frank "Williams had been found guilty of 
some atrocious crime. Men who got up early that 
morning had seen his body dangling from a buggy- 
pole in Main Street. 



CHAPTER XV. 

DESCENT OF THE MOUNTAINS. 

After passing Fort Bridger, the descent becomes 
quick, abrupt, and verdant. The track is still rough, 
stony, unmade ; here running over round crests, there 
cutting into deep canyons, anon toiling through 
troughs of sand ; but on the whole we go dropping 
down from the high plateau of the Sierras, where N'a- 
ture is dry and sterile, seemingly unfit for the occupa- 
tion of man, into deep ravines and narrow dales, in 
which the wild sage gives place to tall, rank grass. 
A little scrub begins to show itself in the clefts and 
hollows; dwarf-oak and' maple now putting on their 
autumnal garb of pink and gold. Stunted pines and 
cedars become a feature in the landscape ; a noise of 
water babbles up from the glens; long serpentine 
fringes of balsam and willow show the courses of the 
descending creeks. We rattle, in the fading light, 
through Muddy Creek, and roll, in the early darkness, 
past Quaking Asp, — startled, as we come round the 
ledge of a sharp hill, to see before us a mighty flame. 



DESCENT OF THE MOUNTAINS. ]27 

as though the valley in our front, the hill-side on our 
flank, were all on lire. It is a Mormon camp. About 
a hundred wagons, corralled, in the usual way, for 
defence against Utes and Snakes, are halted in a dark 
valley, where rocks and crests pile high into the 
heavens, shutting out the stars. In front of each 
wagon burns a huge fire ; men and women, boys and 
girls, are gathered round these fires; some eating their 
supper, some singing brisk songs, others again danc- 
ing ; oxen, mules, horses, stand about in happy confu- 
sion of group and color; dogs sleep round the fires or 
bark at the mail ; and through all this wild, unex- 
pected scene, clash the cj-mbals, horns, and trumpets 
of a band. Though we are still high up in the moun- 
tains, we feel, as it were, already on the borders of the 
Salt Lake Eden, that home of the Latter-Day Saints, 
to which the weaver is called from Manchester, the 
peasant from Llandudno, the cobbler from White- 
chapel. 

An hour later we drop into Bear Kiver Station, kept 
by acting-bishop Myers, an English member of the 
Mormon Church; a dignitary who has hitherto limited 
his rights over the weaker sex to the wedding of two 
wives. One wife lives with him at Bear Kiver ; one 
hired help, a young English woman on a visit (and I 
fear in some little peril of the heart), with two or three 
men, his servants, make up this bishop's flock and 
household. The wife is a lady ; simple, elegant, be- 
witching ; who, while we rinse the dust from our 
throats and dash cold water about our heads and faces, 
hastily and daintily sets herself to cook our food. 
Tired and hungry as we are, this Myers appears to us 
the very model of a working bishop for a working 
world. At Oxford he would count for little, in the 
House of Lords for nothing. His words are not 



128 NEW AMEBIC A. 

choice, his intonation is not good and musical; he 
hardly (I will not answer for it) knows a Greek par- 
ticle by sight ; but he seems to know very well how a 
good man should receive the hungry and weary who 
are cast down at his door on a frosty night. After 
poking up the stove, heaping wood upon the fire, 
chopping up a side of mutton (it is the first fresh meat 
we have seen for days), he runs out of doors to haul 
water from the well, and puts straw into our coach 
that our feet may be kept warm in the coming frost. 
From him we get genuine tea, good bread, even but- 
ter ; not sage tea, hot dough, and a pinch of salt. The 
chops are delicious ; and the bishop's elegant wife and 
her ladylike friend, by the grace and courtesy with 
which they serve the table, turn a common mountain 
meal into a banquet. 

We leave Bear River with respect for one phase of 
the working episcopacy founded by Brigham Young. 

In the night we pass by Hanging Rock and roll 
down Echo Canyon ; a ravine of rocks and nooks, sur- 
prising, lovely, fantastic, when they are seen under 
the light of luminous autumn stars. Early morning 
brings us to Weber River, where we break our fasts 
on hot-bake and leather ; early day to Coalville, the 
first Mormon village on our road ; a settlement built 
of wooden sheds, in the midst of rude gardens and 
patches of corn-fields, hardly redeemed from that wild 
waste of nature in the midst of which a few Utes and 
Bannocks hunted the elk and scalped each other not 
a score of years since. Coal is found here ; also a 
little water, a little wood. We glalice with quick 
eyes into the houses, some of which stand in groups 
and rows, as we learn from our driver that those 
wooden cottages which have two or more doors, are 
the houses of elders who have married two or more 



DESCENT OF THE MOUNTAINS. 129 

wives. We think of the arid sweeps through which 
we have just come ; of our six days' journey among 
rocky passes and mountain slopes ; and gaze with 
wonder on the courage, industry, fanaticism, which 
could have heen induced, hy any teaching, by any 
promise, to attack this desolate valley, with a view to 
making out of it a habitation fit for man. But here 
is Coalville ; a town in the hills, at least the beginning 
of a town; placed in a gorge where engineers and 
explorers had declared it utterly impossible for either 
man or beast to live. Patches of corn run down to 
the little creek. Oxen graze on the hill-sides. Dogs 
guard the farmhouses. Hogs grub into the soil ; 
chickens hop among the sheaves ; and horses stand in 
the court-yards. Rosy children, with their blue eyes 
and flaxen curls telling of their pure English blood, 
play before the gates and tumble in the straw. Girls 
of nine or ten years are milking cows ; boys of the 
same age are driving teams; women are cooking, 
washing ; men are digging potatoes, gathering in 
fruit, chopping and sawing planks. Every man seems 
busy, every place prosperous, though the ravine was 
but yesterday a desert of dust and stones. From 
among the green shrubs a neat little chapel peeps out. 
Lower down the valleys the scene expands, and 
herds of cattle dot the wide sweeps of grass. "We pass 
Kimball's Hotel — a station of the Overland Mail — 
kept by one of Heber Kimball's sons; a man of some 
wealth, living out here in the lonely hills, with his 
sheep, his cattle, and his three wives ; professing the 
Mormon creed, though he is said to have been 
drummed out of the society of Salt Lake for tipsiness 
and rioting in the public streets. Sharp justice, as 
we hear, is meted out by the Saints upon offenders ; 
no claims of blood, however high or near, being suf- 



130 NUW AMEBIC A. 

ferecl to protect a criminal from the sentence of his 
church. 

At Mountain Dell, the house of Bishop Hardy, a 
man having eight wives, three of whom live with 
him in this mountain shed, we see a little Ute Indian, 
who has been reclaimed from his tribe, made into a 
faithful Mormon and a good boy ; a shrewd lad, who 
seems to know the dijfference between dining off wolf 
and off mutton, and who hates the red-skins, his 
brethren in the war-paint, with all his soul. From 
one of the bishop's wives we learn that he was bought, 
as a papoose, from his father for a few dollars ; that 
he is a sharp fellow, and works very well when he is 
made to do so ; that he is lazy by nature, and apt to 
lie much in the sun ; that he is slow at books and 
learning, but takes easily to horses, and drives a team 
very well. In fact, he is capable of being raised into 
a white man's servant, and trained, at much cost and 
care, to fetch in wood and water for the white man's use. 

The Mormons have a peculiar view about the red 
men, whom they regard as a branch of the Hebrew^ 
people, who migrated from Palestine to North Amer- 
ica in their days of power and righteousness, while 
they yet held the priesthood in their hands. When, 
through the sin of disobedience the}^ lost their priest- 
hood, they lost, along with that sacred office, their 
white color, their bright intelligence, their noble 
physiognomy. According to the Mormons, some 
rags and tatters of their early faith — of their ancient 
institutions — still remain to these remnants of Israel; 
their belief in one Great Spirit; their division into 
tribes ; their plurality of wives. But the curse of 
God is upon them and upon their seed. They came 
of a sacred race, — but a sacred race now lying under 
the stern reproof of Heaven. "In time — in God's 



DESCENT OF THE MOUNTAINS. 131 

own time," said Young to me, in a subsequent con- 
versation, "they will be recalled into a state of grace: 
they will then cease to do evil and learn to do good ; 
they will settle down in cities ; they will become 
white in color; and they will act as a nation of 
priests." 

The change will, indeed, be great that transforms a 
Pawnee and a Ute into the likeness of Aaron and of 
Joshua. 

Before the war broke out, and slavery was banished 
as an institution from the American soil, the Saints 
had passed a territorial law permitting the purchase 
of boys and girls from the Indians, with a view to 
their being baptized into the church and taught use- 
ful trades. Ute and Snake are only too ready to sell 
their infants ; and many young red-skins, bought un- 
der that law, are still to be found in these valleys. 
Of course they are now free as the whites, and far 
more lazy, treacherous, and wicked. 

The bishop's wife, having had her eyes opened by 
many trials, has come to have little faith in the gov- 
ernment plan for reclaiming Utes and Bannocks. 
She sees that a curse is on them, and on their seed ; 
she hopes that when the time shall come for that 
curse to be removed, the red man will be capable of 
thrift, of labor, of salvation ; but that removal, she 
owns to herself, must be the work of God, not that of 
man. 

A long steep canyon, nine or ten miles in length, — 
with fringe of verdure and beck of water running 
through it ; the verdure feeding cattle, the water 
working mills, — opens a way from Mountain Dell 
into the Salt Lake Basin, which we come upon sud- 
denly, and by a sort of surprise, on turning a project- 
ing mountain ledge. 



132 NEW AMERICA. 

The scene now in front of us, from whatever point 
of view it may be taken, is one of the half-dozen pure 
and perfect landscapes which the earth can show. 
E"o wonder that the poor emigrant from a Liverpool 
cellar, from a Blackwall slum, exalted as his vision 
must be, with religious fervor, and by sharp privation 
looks down upon it as a terrestrial Paradise. 

Lying at the foot of these snowy ranges of the Wa- 
satch mountains, spreads the great plain, far away 
into the unseen vistas of the north; the whole ex- 
panse of valley tilled with a golden haze of surprising 
richness, the eftect of a tropical sunshine streaming 
over fields sown thick with sun-flowers, like an Eng- 
lish field with buttercups, and over multitudinous 
lakelets, pools, and streams : to the left soar into the 
clouds and curl round the Great Salt Lake a chain of 
mountains, which the Lidians call Oquirrh. In our 
front lies the sparkling city, the New Jerusalem, in 
its bowers of trees; beyond that city flows the Jordan, 
bearing the fresh waters of Utah through the plains 
into Salt Lake, which darkens and cools the great 
valley, with its amplitudes of blue. From the lake 
itself, which is a hundred miles broad, a hundred and 
fifty miles long, spring two islands, purple and moun- 
tainous ; Antelope Island (now called Church Island) 
and Stansbury Island ; while, on either side, and be- 
yond the blue waters of the lake itself, run chains of 
irregular and picturesque heights, the barren sierras 
of Utah and Nevada. 

The air is soft and sweet; southern in its odor, 
northern in its freshness. Cool winds come down 
from the Wasatch peaks; in which drifts of snow and 
frozen pools lie all through tlie sumjner months. So 
clear is the atmosphere that Black Rock on the Salt 
Lake, twenty-five miles distant, seems but a few hun- 



THE NEW JE BUS ALE 31. 133 

dred yards in our front, and crests which stands sixty 
miles apart, appear to our sight as though they were 
peaks of a single range. 

Lower down in the valley the golden haze steeps 
everything in its own delicious light. The city ap- 
pears to be one vast park or garden, in which you 
count innumerable masses of dark green trees, Avith a 
white kiosk, a chapel, a court-house, sprinkled about 
it here and there. Above it, on a bank of higher 
land, is the camp ; a cluster of white tents and shan- 
ties ; from wbich a Gentile government watches sus- 
piciously the doings of men in this city of the Saints. 
But the camp itself adds picture to the scene ; a bar 
of color to the landscape of yellow, white, and green. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE NEW JERUSALEM. 

A DREAM of the night, helped by a rush of water 
from the hill-side, (not larger than the Xenil, which 
gave life to Granada, and changed the barren vega into 
a garden,) fixed the site of the New Jerusalem. Brig- 
ham Young tells me, that when coming over the 
mountains, in search of a new home for his people, he 
saw, in a vision of the night, an angel standing on a 
conical hill, pointing to a spot of ground on which 
the new Temple must be built. Coming down into 
this basin of Salt Lake, he tirst sought for the cone 
which he had seen in his dream ; and when he had 
found it, he noticed a stream of fresh hill-water flow- 
ing at its base, which he called the City Creek. Elder 
12 



134 NEW AMEBIC A. 

George Smith, and a few of the pioneers, led this 
creek through and through a patch of likely soil, into 
which they then stuck potatoes ; and having planted 
these bulbs, they took a few steps northward, marked 
out the Temple site, and drew a great square line 
about it. The square block, ten acres in extent, is 
the heart of the city, the Mormon holy place, the 
harem of this new Jerusalem of the West." 

The cite of the new city was laid between the two 
great lakes, Utah Lake and Salt Lake, — like the town 
of Interlachen between Brienz and Thun, — though the 
distances are here much greater, the two inland seas 
of Utah being real seas when compared against the 
two charming lakelets in the Bernese Alps. A river 
now called the Jordan flows from Utah into Salt Lake ; 
but it skirts the town only, and lying low down in the 
valley, is useless, as yet, for irrigation. Young has a 
plan for constructing a canal from Utah Lake to the 
city, by way of the lower benches of the Wasatch 
chain ; a plan which will cost much money, and ferti- 
lize enormous sweeps of barren soil. If Salt Lake 
City is left to extend itself in peace, the canal will soon 
be dug; and the bench, now covered with stones, with 
sand, and a little wild sage, will be changed into vine- 
yards and gardens. 

The city, which covers, we are told, three thousand 
acres of land, between the mountains and the river, is 
laid out in blocks of ten acres each. Each block is 
divided into lots of one acre and a quarter; this quan- 
tity of land being considered enough for an ordinary 
cottage and garden. 

As yet, the Temple is unbuilt ; the foundations are 
well laid, of massive granite; and the work is of a 
kind that bids fair to last; but the Temple block is 
covered with temporary buildings and erections — the 



THE NEW JERUSALEM. 135 

old tabernacle, the great bowery, the new tabernacle, 
the temple foundations. A high wall encloses these 
edifices; a poor wall, without art, without strength; 
more like a mud wall than the great work which sur- 
rounds the temple platform on Moriah. When the 
works are finished, the enclosure will be trimmed and 
planted, so as to ofter shady walks and a garden of 
flowers. 

The Temple block gives form to the whole city. 
From each side of it starts a street, a hundred feet in 
width, going out on the level plain, and in straight 
lines into space. Streets of the same width, and 
parallel to these, run north and south, east and west; 
each planted with locust and ailautus trees, cooled by 
two running streams of water from the hill-side. These 
streets go up north, towards the bench, and nothing 
but the lack of people prevents them from travelling 
onward, south and west, to the lakes, which they 
already reach on paper, and in the imagination of the 
more fervid saints. 

Main Street runs along the Temple front ; a street 
of offices, of residences, and of trade. Oi-iginally, it 
Avas meant for a street of the highest rank, and bore 
the name of East Temple Street; upon it stood, besides 
the Temple itself, the Council house, the Tithing 
ofiice, the dwellings of Young, Kimball, Wells, the 
three chief oflicers of the Mormon church. It was 
once amply watered and nobly planted; but commerce 
has invaded the precincts of the modern temple, as it 
invaded those of the old ; and the power of Brigham 
Young has broken and retreated before that of the 
money-dealers and the venders of meat and raiment. 
Banks, stores, oflices, hotels, — all the conveniences of 
modern life, — are springing up in Main Street; trees 
have in many parts been cut down, for the sake of 



136 NEW AMERICA. 

loading and unloading goods; the trim little gardens, 
full of peach-trees and apple-trees, towering the adobe 
cottages in their midst, have given way to shop-fronts 
and to hucksters' stalls. In the business portion, 
Main Street is wide, dusty, unpaved, unbuilt; a street 
showing the three stages through which every Amer- 
ican city has to pass : the log-shanty, the adobe cot (in 
places where clay and fuel can be easily obtained, this 
stage is one of brick), and the stone house. Many of 
the best houses are still of wood; more are of adobe, 
the sun-dried bricks once used in Babylonia and in 
Egypt, and still used everywhere in Mexico and Cali- 
fornia; a few are of red stone, and even granite. The 
Temple is being built of granite from a neighboring 
hill. The Council house is of red stone; as are many 
of the great magazines, such as Godbe's, Jennings', 
Gilbert's, Clawson's; magazines in which you find 
everything for sale, as in a Turkish bazaar, from 
candles and champagne, down to gold dust, cotton 
prints, tea, pen-knives, canned meats, and mouse-traps. 
The smaller shops, the ice-cream houses, the saddlers, 
the barbers, the restaurants, the hotels, and all the 
better class of dwellings, are of sun-dried bricks; a 
good material in this dry and sunny climate ; bright 
to the eye, cosy in winter, cool in summer; though 
such houses are apt to crumble away in a shower of 
rain. A few shanties, remnants of the first emigration, 
still remain in sight. Lower down, towards the south, 
where the street runs oif into infinite space, the locust 
and ailantus trees reappear. 

In its busy, central portion, nothing hints the differ- 
ence between Main Street in Salt Lake City, and the 
chief thoroughfare, say, of Kansas, Leavenworth, and 
Denver, except the absence of grog-shops, lager-beer 
saloons, and bars. The hotels have no bars ; the streets 



THE NEW JERUSALEM. 137 

have no betting-houses, no gaming-tables, no brothels, 
no drinking-places. In my hotel — " The vSalt Lake" — 
kept by Col. Little, one of the Mormon elders, I cannot 
buy a glass of beer, a flask of wine. No house is now- 
open for the sale of drink (though the Gentiles swear 
they will have one open in a few weeks) ; and the 
table of the hotel is served at morning, noon, and 
night, with tea. In this absence of public solicitation 
to sip either claret-cobbler, whisky-bourbon, Tom 
and Jerry, mint-julep, eye-opener, fix-up, or any other 
Yankee deception in the shape of liquor — the city is 
certainly very much unlike Leavenworth, and the Eiver 
towns where every third house in a street appears to 
be a drinking den. Going past the business quarter, 
we return to the first ideas of Young in planting his 
new home ; the familiar lines of acacias grow by the 
becks; the cottages stand back from the road-side, 
twenty or thirty feet ; the peach-trees, apple-trees, and 
vines, tricked out with roses and sun-flowers, smother 
up the roofs. 

Right and left from Main Street, crossing it, parallel 
to it, lie a multitude of streets, each like its fellow ; a 
hard, dusty road, with tiny becks, and rows of locust, 
cotton-wood, and philarea, and the building-land laid 
down in blocks. In each block stands a cottage, in the 
midst of frnit-trees. Some of these houses are of goodly 
appearance as to size and style, and would let for high 
rentals in the Isle of Wight. Others are mere cots of 
four or five rooms, in which the polygamous families, 
should they ever quarrel, would find it difficult to form 
a ring and fight. In some of these orchards you see 
two, three houses ; pretty Swiss cottages, like many in 
St. John's Wood, as to gable, roof, and paint : these 
are the dwellings of different wives. "Whose houses 
are these?" we ask a lad in East Temple Street, point- 
12* 



138 NJ^W AMEBIC A. 

ing to some pretty-looking villas. " They belong," 
said he, " to Brother Kimball's family." Here, on the 
bench, in the highest part of the city, is Elder Hiram 
Clawson's garden ; a lovely garden, red with delicious 
peaches, plums, and apples, on which, through the 
kindness of his youngest wife, we have been hospitably 
fed during our sojourn with the Saints; a large house 
stands in front, in which live his first and second 
wives with their nurseries of twenty children. But 
what is yon dainty white bower in the corner, with 
its little gate and its smother of roses and creepers ? 
That is the house of the youngest wife, Alice, a 
daughter of Brigham Young. She has a nest of her 
own, apart from the other women, — a nest in which 
she lives with her foui' little boys, and where she is 
supposed to have as much of her own way with her 
lord, as the daughter of a Sultan enjoys in the harem 
of a Pasha. Elder Naisbit, one of the Mormon poets, 
an English convert to the faith as it is in Joseph, lives 
with his two wives and their brood of young children, 
on the high ground opposite to Elder Clawson, in a 
very pretty mansion, something like a cottage on the 
Under Cliff. Much of the city is only green glade 
and orchard waiting for the people who are yet to come 
and fill it with the pride of life. 

In First South Street stand the Theatre and the City 
Hall, both fine structures, and for Western America 
remarkable in style. 

The City Hall is used as head-quarters of police, 
and as a court of justice. The Mormon police are 
swift and silent, with their eyes in every corner, their 
grip on every rogue. N"o fact, however slight, appears 
to escape their notice. A Gentile friend of mine, 
going through the dark streets at night towards the 
theatre, spoke to a Mormon lady of his acquaintance 



THE NE W JER U SALEM. 1 39 

whom he overtook ; next day a gentleman called at 
his hotel, and warned him not to speak with a Mormon 
woman in the dark streets unless her father should be 
with her. In the winter months there are usually 
seven or eight hundred miners in Salt Lake City, 
young Norse gods of the Denver stamp ; every man 
with a bowie-knife in his belt, a revolver in his hand, 
clamoring for beer and whisky, for gaming-tables and 
lewd women, comforts which are strictly denied to 
them by these Saints. The police have all these vio- 
lent spirits to repress; that they hold them in decent 
order with so little bloodshed is the wonder of every 
western governor and judge. William Gilpin, gov- 
ernor elect of Colorado, and Robert Wilson, sheriff of 
Denver and justice of the peace, have nothing but 
praise to give these stern and secret, but most able and 
etfective mini-sters of police. 

With this court of justice we have scarcely made 
acquaintance. A few nights ago we met the judge, 
who kindly asked us to come and see his court; but 
while we were chatting in his ante-room, before the 
cases were called, some one whispered in his ear that 
we were members of the English bar, on which he 
slipped out of sight, and adjourned his court. This 
judge, when he is not sitting on the bench, is engaged 
in vending drugs across a counter in Main Street; 
and as w^e know where to find him in his store, we 
sometimes drop in for soda-Avater and a cigar; but we 
have not yet been able to fix a time for seeing his 
method of administering justice at Salt Lake. 

The city has two sulphur-springs, over which Brig- 
ham Young has built wooden shanties. One bath is 
free. The water is refreshing and relaxing, the heat 92°. 

No beggar is seen in the streets ; scarcely ever a 
tipsy man ; and the drunken fellow, when you see one, 



140 NEW AMERICA. 

i& always either a minor or a soldier — of course a Gen- 
tile. No one seems poor. The people are quiet and 
civil, far more so than is usual in these western parts. 
From the presence of trees, of water, and of cattle, the 
streets have a pastoral character, seen in no other city 
of the mountains and the plains. Here, standing under 
the green locust-trees, is an ox come home for the 
night ; yonder is a cow at the gate being milked by a 
child. Light mountain-wagons stand about, and the 
sun-burnt emigrants, who have just come in from the 
prairies, thankful for shade and water, sit under the 
acacias, and dabble their feet in the running creeks. 

More than all other streets, perhaps. Main Street, as 
the business quarter, offers picture after picture to an 
artist's eye ; most of all when an emigrant-train is 
coming in from the plains. Such a scene is before me 
now; for the train which we passed in the gorge above 
Bear River, has just_ arrived, with sixty wagons, four 
hundred bullocks, six hundred men, w^omen, and chil- 
dren, all English and Welsh. The w^agons till the 
street : some of the cattle are lying downi in the hot 
sun; the men are eager and excited, having finished 
their long journey across the sea, across the States, 
across the prairies,, across the mountains ; the women 
and little folks are scorched and w^an ; dirt, fatigue, 
privation, give them a wild, unearthly look; and you 
would hardly recognize in this picturesque and ragged 
group the sober Monmouth farmer, the clean Wool- 
wich artisan, the smart London smith. Mule-teams 
are being unloaded at the stores. Miners from Mon- 
tana and Idaho, in huge boots and belts, are loafing 
about. A gang of Snake Indians, with their long 
hair, their scant draper}^ and their proud reserve, are 
cheapening the dirtiest and cheapest lots. Yon fellow 
in the broad sombrero, dashing up the dust with his 



THE M0R3T0N THEATRE. 141 

wiry little horse, is a New Mexican ; liere comes a 
heavy Californian swell ; and there, in the blue uni- 
form, go two officers from the camp. 

The air is wonderfully pure and bright. Rain sel- 
dom falls in the valley, though storms occur in the 
mountains almost daily ; a cloud coming up in the 
western hills, rolling along the crests, and threatening 
the city with a deluge ; but when breaking into wind 
and showers, it seems to run along the hill-tops into 
the Wasatch chain, and sail away eastward into the 
snowy range. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE MORMON THEATRE. 

The play-house has an office and a service in this 
Mormon city, higher than the churches would allow 
to it in London, Paris, and New York. Brigham 
Young is an original in many ways; he is the high- 
priest of what claims to be a new dispensation ; yet 
he has got his theatre into perfect order, before he has 
raised his Temple foundations above the ground. 

That the drama had a religious origin, and that the 
stage has been called a school of manners, every one 
is aware. Young feels inclined to go back upon all 
first principles ; in family life to those of Abraham, 
in social life to those of Thespis. Priests invented 
both the ancient and the modern stages ; and if expe- 
rience shows as strongly in Salt Lake City as in New 
York, that people love to be light and merry — to 
laugh and glow — why should their teachers neglect 



142 ^^W AMEBIC A. 

the thousand opportunities ofiered by a play, of getting 
them to laugh in the right places, to glow at the 
proper things? Why should Young not preach morali- 
ties from the stage? "Why should he not train his 
actors and his actresses to be models of good conduct, 
of correct pronunciation, and of taste in dress ? Why 
should he not try to reconcile rehgious feeling with 
pleasure ? 

Brigham Young may be either right or wrong in 
his ideas of the uses to which a playhouse may be 
turned in a city where they have no high schools and 
colleges as yet; but he is bent on trying his experi- 
ment to an issue ; for this purpose he has built a model 
theatre, and he is now making an eflbrt to train a 
model company. 

Outside, his theatre is a rough Doric edifice, in which 
the architect has contrived to produce a certain efltect 
by very simple means ; inside, it is light and airy, 
having no curtains and no boxes, save two in the 
proscenium, with light columns to divide the tiers, and 
having no other decoration than pure white paint and 
gold. The pit, rising sharply from the orchestra, so 
that every one seated on its benches can see and hear 
to advantage, is the choicest part of the house. All 
these benches are let to families ; and here the prin- 
cipal elders and bishops may be seen every play-night, 
surrounded by their wives and children, laughing and 
clapping like boys at a pantomime. Yon rocking- 
chair, in the centre of the pit, is Young's own seat ; 
his place of pleasure, in the midst of his Saints. When 
he chooses to occupy his private box, one of his wives, 
perhaps Eliza the Poetess, Harriet the Pale, or Amelia 
the Magnificent, rocks herself in his chair while 
laughing at the play. Round about that chair, as the 
place of honor, cluster the benches of those who claim 



THE MORMON TEE A TEE. 14 3 

to stand nearest to their prophet : of Heber Kimball, 
■first councillor ; of Daniel Wells, second councillor 
and general-in-chief ; of George A. Smith, apostle and 
historian of the church ; of George Q. Cannon, 
apostle ; of Edward Hunter, presiding bishop ; of 
Elder Stenhouse, editor of the " Daily Telegraph ;" 
and of a host of less brilliant Mormon lights. 

In the sides of the proscenium nestle two private 
boxes : one is reserved for the Prophet, when he 
pleases to be alone, or wishes to have a gossip with 
some friend ; the other is given up to the girls who 
have to play during the night, but who are not engaged 
in the immediate business of the piece. As a rule, 
every one's pleasure is considered in this model play- 
house ; and I can answer, on the part of Miss Adams, 
Miss Alexander, and other young artists, that this 
appropriation to their sole use of a private box, into 
which they can run at all times, in any dress, without 
being seen, is considered by them as a very great 
comfort. 

Through the quick eye and careful hand of his 
manager, Hiram Clawson, the President may be con- 
gratulated on having made his playhouse into some- 
thing coming near to that which he conceives a play- 
house should be. Everything in front of the foot- 
lights is in keeping; peace and order reign in the 
midst of fun and frolic, Neither within the doors nor 
about them, do you iind the riot of our own Lyceum 
and Drury Lane ; no loose women, no pickpockets, no 
ragged boys and girls, no drunken and blaspheming 
men. As a Mormon never drinks spirits, and rarely 
smokes tobacco, the only dissipation in which you find 
these hundreds of hearty creatures indulging their 
appetites, is that of sucking a peach. Short plays are 
in vogue in this theatre, just as short sermons are the 



144 NEW AMERICA. 

rule in yon tabernacle. The curtain, wliich rises at 
eight, conies down about half-past ten; and as the 
Mormon fashion is for people to sup before going out, 
they retire to rest the moment they get home, never 
suffering their amusements to infringe on the labors 
of the coming day. Your bell rings for breakfast at 
six o'clock. 

But the chief beauties of this model playhouse lie 
behind the scenes; in the ample space, the perfect 
light, the scrupulous cleanliness of every part. I am 
pretty well acquainted with green-rooms and side wings 
in Europe ; but I have never seen, not in Italian and 
Austrian theatres, so many delicate arrangements for 
the privacy and comfort of ladies and gentlemen as at 
Salt Lake. The green-room is a real drawing-room. 
The scene-painters have their proper studios; the 
dressers and decorators have immense magazines. 
Every lady, however small her part in the play, has a 
dressing-room to herself. 

Young understands that the true work of reform in 
a playhouse must begin behind the scenes ; that you 
must elevate the actor before you can purify the stage. 
To this end, he not only builds dressing-rooms and a 
private box for the ladies who have to act, but he places 
his daughters on the stage as an example and encour- 
agement to others. Three of these young sultanas, 
Alice, Emily, and Zina, are on the stage. With Alice, 
the youngest wife of Elder Clawson, I have had the 
honor to make an acquaintance, which might be called 
a friendship, and from her lips I have learned a good 
deal as to her father's ideas about stage reform. " I 
am not myself very fond of playing," she said to me 
one day as we sat at dinner, — not in these words, per- 
haps, but to this effect, — " but my father desires that 
my sisters and myself should act sometimes, as he 



THE MORMON THEATRE. 145 

does not think it right to ask any poor man's child to 
do anything which his own children would object to 
do." Her dislike to playing, as she afterwards told 
me, arose from a feeling that Nature had given her 
no abilities for acting well ; she was fond of going to 
see a good piece, and seldom omitted being present 
when she had not to play. Brigham Young has to 
create, as well as to reform, the stage of Salt Lake 
City ; and the chief trouble of a manager who is seven 
hundred miles from the next theatre, must always be 
with his artists. Talent for the work does not grow 
in every field, like a sunflower and a peach-tree ; it 
must be sought for in nooks and corners ; now in a 
shoe-shop, anon in a dairy, then in a counting-house ; 
but wherever the talent may be found, Young cannot 
think of asking any young girl to do a thing which it 
is supposed that a daughter of his own would scorn. 

In New York, in St. Louis, in Chicago, nobody 
would assert that the stage is a school of virtue, that 
acting is a profession which a sober man would like 
his daughter to adopt. Young does not blind himself 
to the fact that in claiming the theatre as a school of 
morals, he has to fight against a social judgment. An 
odor of vice, as of a poisonous weed, infects the air 
of a playhouse everywhere ; though nowhere less 
offensively than in American towns. Against this 
evil, much of it the consequence of bad traditions, he 
offers up, as it were, a part of himself — his children ; 
the only persons in Salt Lake City who could really 
do this cleansing work. 1\\ this way, Alice and Zina 
may be regarded as two priestly virgins who have been 
placed on the public stage to purify it by their presence 
from an ancient but unnecessary stain. 

Young, and his agent Clawson, are bestowing much 
care upon the education of Miss Adams, a young lady 



146 NEW AMEBIC A. 

who has everything to learn except the art of being 
lovely ; also upon that of Miss Alexander, a girl who, 
besides being pretty and piquant, has genuine ability 
for her work. A story, which shows that Young has 
a feeling for humor, has been told me, of which Miss 
Alexander is the heroine. A starring actor from San 
Francisco fell into desperate love for her, and went up 
to the President's house for leave to address her. 
"Ha! my good fellow," said the Prophet; "I have 
seen you play 'Hamlet' very well, and 'Julius Ceesar' 
pretty well, but you must not aspire to Alexander ! " 

We saw Brigham Young for the first time in his 
private box. A large head, broad, fair face, with blue 
eyes, light-brown hair, good nose and merry mouth ; 
a man plainly dressed, in black coat and pantaloons, 
white waistcoat and cravat, gold studs and sleeve-links, 
English in build and looks, — but English of the mid- 
dle class and of a provincial town : such was the Mor- 
mon prophet, pope, and king, as we first saw him in 
the theatre among his people. A lady, one of his 
wives, whom we afterwards came to know as Amelia, 
sat with him in the box ; she, too, was dressed in a 
quiet English style ; and now and then she eyed the 
audience from behind her curtain, through an opera- 
glass, as English ladies are apt to do at home. She 
was pretty, and appeared to us then rather pensive 
and poetical. 

The pit was almost filled with girls ; on many 
benches sat a dozen damsels in a row; children of 
Kimball, Cannon, Smith, and Wells ; in some places 
twenty or thirty girls were grouped togethe]'. Young, 
as he told me himself, has forty-eight living children, 
some of whom are grown up and married ; and, since 
he sets the fashion of attending this theatre among 
his people, it is only right that he should encourage 




BRIGHAM YOUNG. 



THE MORMON THEATRE. 147 

his children to appear, both before the foot-lights and 
behind them. Alice is the young lady married to 
Clawson. Zina, whom we have seen play Mrs, Musket 
in the farce of "My Husband's Ghost," is a lady-like 
girl, tall, full in figure, moon-faced (as the Orientals 
say), not much of an artist. Emily we have also seen ; 
Elder Clawson is said to be courting her. I am told 
that the iiame is mutual ; and that Emily is not un- 
likely to be gathered home to her sister Alice. Gen- 
tile rumor — fond of toying with the domestic secrets 
of the President's family — says that Alice is not happy 
with her lord ; but this is one of those Gentile rumors 
which I can almost swear is false. One day last week 
I had the pleasure of taking Sister Alice down to din- 
ner, of talking with her for a long evening, and of 
seeing and romping with her four brave boys. A 
brighter, merrier woman I have rarely seen ; and I 
noted, as a peculiarity in her, not common in either 
eastern or western America, that she always addressed 
her husband by his baptismal name of Hiram. Ameri- 
can ladies almost everywhere speak to their husbands 
as Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith, not as William and 
George. The perils of a double alliance with the 
Mormon pope are said to be very great ; envy among 
the Elders, collision with the Gentiles, jealousy at 
Camp Douglas, hostility in Washington; but Elder 
Clawson is said to be ready to take his chance with 
Sister Emily, as he has done with Alice, answering, 
as the Mormons put it, Washington theories by 
Deseret facts. 

The first piece we saw was Charles the Twelfth. 
Where Adam Brock warns his daughter, Eudigo, 
against military sparks, the whole pit of young ladies 
crackled off into girlish laughter ; the reference being 
taken to Camp Douglas and the United States officers 



148 NEW AMEBIC A. 

stationed there, many of whom were in the house, and 
heartily enjoyed the fun. This play happens to be 
full of allusions to soldiers and their amours, and 
every word of these allusions was appropriated and 
applied by the Saints to their local politics. The 
interference of these United States officers and sol- 
diers with the Mormon women is a very sore point 
with the Saints, some of their wives having, it is said, 
been seduced and carried off. Young spoke to me 
with indignation of such proceedings, though he did 
not name the offenders as connected with the camp. 
" They cause us trouble," he said; "they intrude into 
our affairs, and even into our families ; we cannot 
stand such things; and when they are guilty, we make 
them bite the dust." I thought of all that I had ever 
heard about Porter Rockwell and his Danite band ; 
but I only smiled and waited for the President to go 
on. He quickly added, " I never had any trouble of 
this sort in my own family." 

When Charles the Twelfth referred to the amours 
of his officers, it was good fun to see the Prophet roll- 
ing back in his chair, convulsed with merriment, while 
the more staid Amelia eyed the audience through her 
opera-glass. 



THE TEMPLE. 149 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE TEMPLE. 

What the Theatre is to the social life of this people, 
the Temple is to its religious life. One symbolizes 
the enjoyment of the present world, the other typifies 
the glories of a world to come. The playhouse has 
been raised and opened because its service is con- 
cerned with the things which cannot wait; the Temple 
is proceeding slowly, block being piled on block with 
the care and leisure of a work designed to last for- 
ever 

These Mormons profess to have so much religion in 
their blood and bone, that they can easily dispense, on 
occasion, with religious forms. A few daj^s ago, I 
happened to hear the first discourse of Brigham Young 
to a band of emigrants, the practical character of 
which would have taken me by surprise, but that my 
previous intercourse with him had in some degree 
prepared me for it. 

"Brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ," he 
said, in substance, "you have been chosen from the 
world by God, and sent through His grace into this 
valley of the mountains, to help in building up His 
kingdom. You are faint and weary from your inarch. 
Rest, then, for a day, for a second day, should you 
need it; then rise up and see how you will live. 
Don't bother yourselves about your religious duties; 
you have been chosen for this work, and God will take 
care of you in it. Be of good cheer. Look about 
this valley into which you have been called. Your 
first duty is to learn how to grow a cabbage, and along 
13* 



150 NEW AMERICA. 

with this cabbage an onion, a tomato, a sweet potato ; 
then how to feed a pig, to buikl a house, to plant a 
garden, to rear cattle, and to bake bread; in one word, 
your first duty is to live. The next duty — for those 
who, being Danes, French, and Swiss, cannot speak it 
now — is to learn English; the language of God, the 
language of the Book of Mormon, the language of 
these Latter Days. These things you must do first ; 
the rest will be added to you in proper seasons. God 
bless you ; and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be 
with you." 

The Temple is not forgotten ; in fact, no people on 
the earth devote more money to their religious edifices 
and services than the Mormons. A tenth of all prod- 
uce — often much more — is cheerfully given up to 
the church ; but the first thought of a convert, the 
first counsel of an elder, is always that the Saint shall 
look upon labor, labor of the hand and brain, and 
most of all labor of the hand, as the appointed sacri- 
tice through which, by God's own law, a man shall be 
purged from sin and shall attain everlasting peace. 
All the passions which another sect throws into po- 
lemics, the Mormons put into work. They do not 
shun discussion by the tongue; in fact, they are shrewd 
of wit, prompt in quotation ; but they prefer that their 
chief controversies with the world should be con- 
ducted by the spade. 

Hence they thrive where no other men could live. 
Those engineers who reported that a hundred settlers 
could never find sustenance in these valleys, were not 
so much in the wrong as many people, wise after 
Young's success, suppose. Even Bridger, the old 
Wasatch trapper, when he oflt'ered to give a thousand 
dollars for every ear of corn to be raised in this val- 
ley, was not such a fool as his words may now seem 



THE TEMPLE. 151 

to make him. Those critics only spoke of what 
might have been expected from ordinary men, im- 
pelled by ordinary motives ; and nothing on earth is 
surer than that ordinary men woujd have perished in 
these regions. The soil is so dry, so barren, that with 
all his passion for work, a Mormon can onl}^ cultivate 
four acres of land, while a Gentile on the Missouri 
and the Kansas rivers can easily cultivate forty acres. 
Take away the Mormon impetus, and in two years 
this city of Salt Lake would come to depend, as Den- 
ver does, on Indiana and Ohio for its supplies of food. 

Who, then, are these working Saints engaged in 
building this Temple ? 

Thirty-six years ago, there were six Mormons in 
America; none in England, none in the rest of Eu- 
rope ; and to-day (1866) they have twenty thousand 
Saints in Salt Lake city ; four thousand each in Og- 
den, Provo, and Logan; in the whole of their stations 
in these valleys, (one hundred and six settlements, 
properly organized by them, and ruled by bishops and 
elders,) a hundred and fifty thousand souls; in other 
parts of the United States, about eight or ten thou- 
sand ; in England and its dependencies, about fifteen 
thousand; in the rest of Europe, ten thousand; in 
Asia and the South Sea Islands, about twenty thou- 
sand; in all not less, perhaps, than two hundred thou- 
sand followers of the gospel preached by Joseph 
Smith, All these converts have been gathered into 
this Temple in thirty years. 

This power of growth — a power developed in the 
midst of persecution — is one of the strangest facts in 
the story of this strange people. In half the span of 
our life they have risen from nothing into a vast and 
vital church. Islam, preaching the Unity of God with 
fire and sword, swept onward with a slower march 



152 NEW AMERICA. 

than these American Saints ; for in little more than 
thirty years they have won a nation from the Chris- 
tian church ; they have occupied a territory larger 
than Spain ; they have built a capital in the desert, 
which is already more populous than Valladolid; they 
have drilled an army which I have reason to believe 
is more than twenty thousand strong; they have 
raised a priesthood, counting in its ranks many hun- 
dreds of working prophets, presidents, bishops, coun- 
cillors, and elders; they have established a law, a the- 
ology, a social science of their own, profoundly hostile 
to all reigning colleges and creeds. 

Counting them man by man, the Saints are already 
strong ; but the returns which are made on paper (so 
frequently beyond the mark in both churches and 
armies) stand in their case far below their actual 
strength, whether we weigh them in the case of 
either temporal or spiritual power. Other men may 
be counted by heads ; these men must be counted by 
heads and hearts ; for every saint is at once a priest 
and a soldier; the whole Mormon population being 
trained alike to controversies of the spirit and of the 
flesh. Every male adult has a thought in his brain, a 
revolver in his belt, a rifle in his hand. Li every 
house we find arms: in the Prophet's chamber, in the 
newspaper oflice, in the emigrants' shed, in the bath- 
house, in the common parlor, in the ordinary sleeping- 
room. On our first arrival at Salt Lake City, the hotel, 
kept by Colonel Little, a leading Mormon, was full of 
guests, and a small dog-hole, without a chair, a table, 
a wardrobe, and with only one camp-bed in it, was 
offered us by a hasty negro for our quarters. Letters 
of introduction, instantly delivered, brought friends 
to our help; but the place was so crammed with visit- 
ors that no room could be made or got, and my friend 



THE TEMPLE. 153 

was obliged to accept Colonel Little's hospitalities at 
his private house. There he found one of the Colo- 
nel's wives reading to her group of pretty girls a book 
in favor of polygamy; and on being shown into a bed- 
room for the night (a bedroom belonging to one of 
Colonel Little's sons), he was startled on finding a 
loaded pistol under his pillow, two Colt's revolvers 
loaded and capped, slung on the wall ; in a corner of 
the room two Ballard rifles. Young Little, whose 
room my friend was occupying for the night, is a lad 
of seventeen. 

At first these Saints were a pacific race, warring 
with the sword of faith only ; but when the Gentile 
spoiler came down upon them, using steel and lead 
against what they called truth, and when it appeared 
that the law, appealed to in their stress of mind and 
body, could give them no help, they girt upon their 
loins a more carnal weapon. They bought swords 
and guns, formed themselves into bands; fell steadily 
to drill, and in a few months they had become more 
formidable in Iowa and Illinois than their weak num- 
bers could have made them. If they were not strong 
enough to found a new empire on the Mississippi in 
defiance of public opinion, they were powerful enough 
to disturb the adjoining States ; and when the Mexi- 
can war broke out, to send a brilliant corps to the 
seat of war. From that day to our own, the martial 
exercises of the Saints have known no pause. Drill 
may now be considered as a part of the Mormon 
ritual ; a Saint being as much bound to appear on 
parade as he is in the tabernacle. It is scarcely a 
figure of speech to say that every male adult of Des- 
eret — as the Mormons call Utah — holds himself 
equally ready to start on a mission and to take the 
field. It is their boast, and I believe not a vain one, 



154 NUW AMEBIC A. 

that in fifteen minutes they can rally three thousand 
rifles, each rifle backed by a revolver, around their 
City Hall. Once, on a false alarm being raised, this 
body of men was actually under arms. 

These Temple builders call themselves Saints, ac- 
cept the Bible as true, baptize their converts in the 
name of Christ ; but they are not a Christian people, 
and no church in the world could hold communion 
with them in their present state. In truth, they ap- 
proach much nearer both in creed, in morals, and in 
government, to the Utes and Shoshones than to any 
Anglo-Saxon church. Young gets a meaning from 
the Bible which no one else ever found there. It has 
been often said that the Saints pretend to have a new 
translation of the Bible ; a rendering made by the 
Holy Spirit ; but Brigham Young tells me that this 
statement is untrue. He claims to understand the 
Scriptures by a purer light than we Gentiles now pos- 
sess, and to have the hidden meaning of certain por- 
tions of them cleared by Divine revelation ; but he 
takes our Bible as it stands in the authorized English 
version. "King James' Bible," he said to me with 
emphasis, "is my Bible; I know of none other." In 
fact, he seems to regard that version as in some sort 
divine, and the very language in which it is couched as 
in some sort sacred. "The English tongue," he said, 
"is a holy form of speech; the best, the softest, and the 
strongest language in the world." I think he considers 
it the language of God and of heaven. "It is holy," 
he said, " for it is the speech in which the angels wrote 
the Book of Mormon, the speech in which God has 
given his last revelation to man." When a friend of 
mine went into a Salt Lake City book-store, and 
asked for the Mormon book of faith, the man behind 
the counter handed him an English Bible. " We 



THE TWO SEERS. 155 

have no better book," he said; "all that we believe 
you will find in those pages." This is what they 
always say ; but it is no less true that they find a 
thousand facts and doctrines in their Bible which we 
have never found in ours : a new history of the crea- 
tion, of the fall, of the atonement, of the future life. 
In fact, they have made for themselves a new heaven 
and a new earth. 

A Mohammedan mosque stands nearer to a Chris- 
tian church than this Mormon temple stands. Islam 
broke down idols, Mormonism sets them up. Smith 
and Young have peopled their strange heaven with 
gods of their own making ; and the Almighty is in 
their eyes but a President of Heaven, a chief among 
spiritual peers, occupying a throne like that of the 
Roman Jove. In short, this temple is nothing less 
than the altar of a new people ; a people having a 
new law, a new morality, a new priesthood, a new 
industry, a new canon, and a new God. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE TWO SEERS. 

Nothing is more easy than to laugh at these votaries. 
They are low people ; scum of the earth, dregs of 
great cities, mire of the roadside, ooze of the river- 
bank and the ditch. Their prophet was Joe Smith ; 
and that story of his about the gold plates, about the 
Urim and Thummim, about the Egyptian mummy, 
about the Spalding manuscript novel, about the sword 
of I-aban, and the angelic visitors, about the Mormon 



156 NEW A31EBIGA. 

bank, the paper money, and the spiritual wife — may 
be so told by a man of comic vein as to excite shouts 
of laughter in a Gentile room. Perhaps the weakest 
side of the new church is that of the Prophet's actual 
life, as the strongest side is that of his actual death. 
Had Smith lived long enough for the facts of his 
career to become known, many persons think that 
among a people keenly alive to humor, he would have 
found no lasting dupes. 

Look, say these persons, into that oily, perky face, 
and say whether you can dream of anything divine 
lying hid behind it? Smith, having the true instinct 
of a sectarian, and knowing that the seeds of the 
Church were sown in the blood of her martyrs, put 
himself day by day into the paths of the persecutor. 
No man is popular until he has been abused — no man 
is thought a saint until he has been calumniated — no 
man is ranked among the prophets until he has been 
stoned to death. "Persecution," said Brigham, "is 
our portion ; if we are right, the world will be against 
us ; but the world will not prevail against the elect of 
God." Smith felt in his heart this truth of truths; 
he sought for oppression as the sign of his calling, 
and his enemies in the States indulged him in the 
dearest wish of his soul. 

Thirty-nine times he was cited into courts of law. 
It is strong evidence of his craft that he contrived to 
be so often accused without being once condemned. 
Every charge made against him put new heart into 
his church. Still the growth of his sect was slow ; 
slow, compared against that of George Fox, that of 
John Wesley, even that of Ann Lee. Round Smith's 
own person there was always bickering and division ; 
many of the Saints declaring that their seer was rob- 
bing the common till. Rigdon, his partner in the 



THE TWO SEERS. 157 

fraud of palming off Spalding's romance as a transla- 
tion from the golden plates, quitted and exposed him. 
Other men followed this example ; and though many 
new converts were being made at a distance among 
people who knew not Joseph in the flesh, the sect 
could hardly have been kept together, had it not 
pleased the western rowdies to make Smith a martyr. 
A gang of ruflians, taking the law into their hands, 
broke into his prison at Carthage, and shot him down 
like a dog. 

A crime, for which no excuse could be found, in- 
fused new spirit into his friends, and opened to his 
missionaries the ears of thousands. After the murder 
had been committed, justice was too slow to seize, too 
weak to punish his assassins ; a fact which seemed to 
carry the appeal of blood from earth to heaven. 

When it became known that Smith was dead — that 
he had been slain for his opinions — his faults were 
instantly swept aside ; the remembrance of his craft, 
his greed, his sensuality, his ignorance, his ambition, 
was buried in his secret grave ; and the unsought 
glory of a martyr's death was counted to him by his 
people, and by many who had not till then become his 
people, as of higher virtue than would have been the 
merit of a saintly and heroic life. 

It is a story as old as time. Smith — living at 
l^auvoo, squabbling with his apostles about debts and 
duns, wrangling with his wife Emma about spiritual . 
wives, subject to constant accusations of theft and 
drunkenness — was certainly not a man whom the 
American people had any cause to fear ; but his assas- 
sination in the jail at Carthage raised this alleged 
debtor and drunkard, this alleged thief and fornicator, 
into the rank of saints. Men who could hardly have 
endured his presence in the flesh proclaimed him, 
14 



158 NEW AMERICA. 

now that he was gone, as a true successor of Moses 
and of Christ. 

Under a new leader, Brigham Young, — a man of 
lowly birth, of keen humor, of unerring good sense, — 
the sect emerged from its condition of internal strife ; 
putting on a more decent garb, closing up its broken 
ranks, laboring with a new zeal, extending its mis- 
sionary work. Finding that through recent troubles 
his position on the Mississippi had become untenable, 
Young advised his followers to yield their prize, to 
quit the world in which they had found no peace, and 
set up their tabernacles in one of those distant wilds 
in the far West, which were then trodden by no feet 
of men, except those of a few Eed Indian tribes, Utes, 
Pawkees, Shoshones, in what was called the American 
desert, and was considered by everybody as E'o-man's 
land. It was a bold device. Beyond the western 
prairies, beyond the Rocky Mountains, lay a howling 
wilderness of salt and stones, a property which no 
white man had yet been greedy enough to claim. 
Some pope, in the middle ages, had bestowed it on 
the crown of Spain, from which it had fallen, as a 
paper waste, to the Mexican Republic; but neither 
Spaniard nor Mexican had ever gone up north into 
the land to possess it. In the centre of this howling 
wilderness lay a Dead Sea, not less terrible than Bahr 
Lout, the Sea of Lot. One-fourth of its water was 
known to be solid salt. The creeks which run into it 
were said to be putrid ; the wells around it were 
known to be bitter ; and the shores for many miles 
were crusted white with saleratus. These shores were 
like nothing else on earth, except the Syrian Ghor, 
and they were more forbidding than the Syrian Ghor 
in this particular, that the waters of Salt Lake are 
dull, impure, and the water lines studded with ditches 



THE TWO SEERS. 159 

and pools, intoleral)]e to the nostrils of living men. 
To crown its repulsive features, this desert of salt, of 
stones, and of putrid creeks, was shut off from the 
world, eastward by the Rocky Mountains, w^estward 
by the Sierra Nevada, ranges of alps high as the chain 
of Mont Blanc, and covered with eternal ice and 
snow. 

The red men who roamed over this country in search 
of roots and insects, were known to be the most savage 
and degraded tribes of their savage and degraded 
race. A herd of bison, a flight of gulls, a swarm of 
locusts, peopled the plain with a fitful life. In spring, 
when a little verdure rose upon the ground, a little 
wild sage, a few dwarf sunflowers, the locusts sprang 
from the earth .and stript the few green plants of every 
leaf and twig. No forests could be seen ; the grass, 
where it grew, appeared to be rank and thin. Only 
the wild sage and the dwarf sunflower seemed to find 
food in the soil, plants which are useless to man, and 
were then thought to be poisonous to his beast. 

Trappers, who had looked down on the Salt Valley 
from peaks and passes in the "Wasatch Mountains, 
pictured it as a region without life, without a green 
slope, even without streams and springs. The wells 
were said to be salt, as the fields were salt. Finding 
no wood, and scarcely any fresh water in that region, 
these explorers had set their seal upon this great 
American desert as a waste unfit for the dwelling, in- 
capable of the sustenance, of civilized men. But 
Young thought otherwise. He knew that where the 
Saint had struck his spade into the ground — at Kirt- 
land in Ohio, at Independence in Missouri, at Nauvoo 
in Illinois — he had been always blessed with a ]Dlen- 
tiful crop ; and the new Mormon seer had faith in the 
same strong sinews, in the same rough hands, in tiie 



160 NEW AMEBIC A. 

same keen ^vill, being able to draw harvests of grain 
from the desolate valley of Salt Lake 

A carpenter by trade, Young knew how to fell trees, 
to shape log^, to build carts and trucks, to stake out 
ground, to erect temporary sheds. The Saints whom 
he would have to lead were inured to labor and pri^ 
vation ; being chiefly New England artisans and 
Western farmers, men who could turn their hands to 
any trade, who could face any difliculty, execute any 
work. An equal number of either English or French 
converts would have perished in the attempt to move 
across the plains and the mountains ; but the native 
American is a man of all trades — a banker, a butcher, 
a carpenter, a clerk, a teamster, a statesman, anything 
at a pinch, everything in its turn — a man rich in 
resources and ingenuities, so that a baker can build 
you a bridge, a preacher can catch you a wild horse, a 
lawyer can bake you hot cakes. Young knew that in 
crossing the great plains and in climbing the great 
ranges, which are loosely clubbed together under the 
name of Rocky Mountains, the privations of his people 
would be sharp ; but to his practical eye these suffer- 
ings of the flesh appeared to be such as brave men 
could be trained by example to bear and not die. 
Food and seed might be carried in their light wagons, 
and a little malt whisky would correct the alkali in the 
bitter creeks. In his band of disciples every man was 
master of some craft ; every woman was either a dairy- 
maid, a baker, a seamstress, a laundress; nay, the 
children could be turned to account in the desert 
roads, for every American girl can milk a cow, every 
American boy can drive a team. 

A party of pioneers (many of whom are still alive 
in Salt Lake Valley) having been sent forward to 
explore and report, the word to move on westward 



THE TWO SEERS. IGl 

was at length given by Young, and in every family of 
Nauvoo preparations were made for a journey, un- 
matched in history since the days when Moses led the 
Israelites out of Egypt. The Saints broke up their 
cheery homes. They gathered, in their haste, a little 
food, a few roots and seeds, a dozen kegs of spirits. 
Then they yoked their mules, their oxen, to the 
country wagons. Those w^ho were too poor to buy 
wagons and oxen, made for themselves trucks and 
wheelbarrows. Pressed upon by their foes, they 
marched away from Nauvoo, even while the winter 
was yet hard upon them, crossing the Mississippi on 
the ice, and started on a journey of fifteen hundred 
miles, through a country without a road, without a 
bridge, without a village, without an inn, without 
wells, cattle, pastures, and cultivated land. As Elder 
John Taylor told me, they left everything behind ; 
their corn-fields, their gardens, their pretty houses, 
with the books, carpets, pianos, everything which they 
contained. The distance to be conquered by these 
emigrants was equal to that from London to Lemberg, 
six times that from Cairo to Jerusalem. Their route 
lay through a prairie peopled by Pawnees, Shoshones, 
wolves and bears ; it was broken by rapid rivers, 
barred by a series of mountain chains ; and the haven 
to be reached, after all their toils and dangers, was 
the shore of a Dead Sea, lying in a sterile valley ; a 
laud watered with brine, and pastures sown with salt. 
14* 



162 NEW AMERICA. 

CHAPTER XX. 

FLIGHT FROM BONDAGE. 

The tale of that journey of the Saints, as we hear it 
from the lips of Young, of Wells, of Taylor, and of 
other old men who made it, is a story to wring and 
yet nerve the hearts of all generous men. When these 
Mormons were driven hy violence from the roofs 
which they had built, the iields which they had tilled, 
the days were short and snow lay thick upon the 
ground. Everything, save a little food for the way- 
side, a few corn-seeds and potato-roots for the coming 
year, had to be abandoned to their armed and riotous 
enemies; the homes which they had made, the temple 
they h^d just finished, the graves the}^ had recently 
dug. Frost bit their little ones in the hands and feet. 
Hunger and thirst tormented both young and aged. 
Long plains of sand, into which the wagon-wheels 
sank to the axle-trees, separated the scanty supplies 
of. water. Wells there were none. Mirage often 
mocked them with its promises ; and even when they 
came to creeks and streams, the}^ often found them 
bitter to the taste, and dangerous to the health. The 
days were short and cold, and the absence of any 
other shelter from the frost than the bit of canvas 
roof made the nights of winter terrible to all. Horses 
sickened by the way. Disease broke out among the 
cows and sheep, so that milk ran short, and the sup- 
plies of mutton were dressed and cooked in fear. 
Some of the poor, the aged, and the ailing, had then 
to be left behind ; with them a guard of young men 
who could ill be spared. 



FLIGHT FROM BONDAGE. 163 

Nor was loss of a part of their youth and strength 
the whole of their calamity in this opening stage of 
their emigration. Just at the hour when every male 
arm was most precious to these exiles, the Mexican 
war broke out ; and a government, which had never 
been strong enough to do them right, came down to 
them for help in arms and men. Young answered 
the appeal of his country like a patriot; five hundred 
youths, the flower of his migrating bands, stepped out 
before him, and with the blessing of their chief upon 
their heads, they mustered themselves into the invad- 
ing corps. 

Weakened by the departure of this living force, the 
Mormons crossed the Missouri River in a ferry made 
by themselves, entering on the gr-eat wilderness, the 
features of which they laid down on a map, making a 
rough road, and throwing light bridges over streams, 
as they went on ; collecting grass and herbs for their 
own use ; sowing corn for those who were to come 
later in the year ; raising temporary sheds in which 
their little ones might sleep; and digging caves in the 
earth as a refuge from the winter snow. Their food 
was scarce, their water bad, and such wild game as 
they could find in the plains — the elk, the antelope, 
the buft'alo — poisoned their blood. ITearly all the 
malt whisky which they had brought from Nauvoo to 
correct the bad water, had been seized on the road, 
and the kegs staved in, by agents of government, on 
pretence of its being meant for the red-skins, to whom 
it was unlawful for the whites to sell any ardent spirits. 
Four kegs only had been saved ; saved by Brigham 
Young himself. An elder, who was present in the 
boat, and who told me the anecdote, says it is the only 
time he ever remembered to have seen the Prophet in 
a rage. Four kegs were on board the Ferry, when 



164 NEW AMERICA. 

the officer seized them and began to knock in the 
staves ; in that spirit lay the lives of the people ; and 
when Brigham saw the man raise his mallet, he drew 
his pistol, levelled it at his head, and cried, " Stay 
your hand ! If you touch that keg, you die, by the 
living God!" The man jumped oif the ferry and 
troubled them no more. 

In our own journey across the plains, though the 
time was August, the weather fine, the passage swift, 
we suffered keenly from the want of fresh food and 
of good water. My companion sickened from bile 
into dysentery; no meat, no drink, would lie in his 
stomach ; nothing but the cognac in our flasks. The 
water almost killed him. His sun-burnt face grew 
chalky-white ; his limbs hung feeble and relaxed; his 
strong physique so drooped that a man at one of the 
ranches, after looking at him for a moment with a 
curious eye, came up to me and said, " You will feel 
very lonely when he is left behind." My own attack 
came later, and in another form. " The skin of my 
hands peeled oft', as if it had been either frayed or 
scraped with a knife ; boils came out upon my back ; 
a pock started on my under eyelid ; my fingers had 
the appearance of scorbutic eruptions. 

These two diseases, Taylor told me, ravaged the 
camp of emigrants. Many sickened of dysentery, still 
more suffered from scurvy. 

Some of the Saints fell back in the face of these 
terrible trials. More fainted by the wayside, and were 
mournfully laid in their desert graves. Every day 
there came a funeral, every night there was fresh 
mourning in the camp. The waste of life is always 
very great in the emigrant trains : even now, when the 
roads are made and the stations are provisioned with 
vegetable food. Of the train which I saw come in, 



FLIGHT FBOM BONDAGE. 1G5 

six had perished on the plains. A yonng lad3'tokl me 
that eighty had died in the train by which she had 
arrived ; forty would perhaps be an average loss in the 
mountains and the plains. But no subsequent train 
has ever suffered like the first. "The waste of life 
was great," said Brigham Young, as he told the dread- 
ful tale. Yet the brave, unbroken body of male and 
female Saints toiled along the frozen way. When 
their hearts were very low, a band of music struck up 
some lively air, in which the people joined and forgot 
their woes. By day they sang hymns, at night they 
danced round the watch-fires. Gloom, asperity, ascet- 
icism, they banished from their camps and from their 
thoughts. Among the few treasures which they had 
carried with them from Nauvoo was a printing-press ; 
and a sheet of news, printed and published by the 
wayside, carried words of good counsel into every part 
of the camp. 

After crossing the sancis and creeks which have 
since become known to civilized men on the maps 
and charts as Nebraska and Dakota, they arrived at 
the foot of the first great range of those high and 
broken chains of alps which are commonly grouped 
together under the name of Rocky Mountains ; over 
these high barriers there was yet no path ; and the 
defiles leading through them were buried in drifts of 
snow. How the Saints toiled up those mountain-sides, 
dragging with them oxen and carts, foraging for food, 
baking their bread and cooking their meat, without 
help and without guides, it brings tears into the eyes 
of aged men to tell. The young and bold went for- 
ward in advance ; driving away the bears and wolves; 
stoning the rattle-snakes; chasing the elk and the Avild 
deer ; making a path for the women and the old men. 
At length, when they had reached the summit of the 



166 NEW AMEBIC A. 

pas8, they gazed upon a series of arid and leafless 
plains, of dry river-beds, of verdureless hill-sides, of 
alkaline bottoms ; pools of bitter water, narrow can- 
yons and gorges, abrupt and steep. Day by day, week 
after week, they toiled over these bleak sierras, through 
these forbidding valleys. Food was running out ; wild 
game became scarce ; the Utes and Snakes were un- 
friendly; at the end of their journey, should they ever 
reach it, lay the dry Salt Desert, in which they had 
consented to come and dwell ! 

Yet they were not disheartened by these hostile 
aspects of the country ; they had not expected a ver- 
dant paradise ; they knew that the land had never 
been seized, because it had not been considered worth 
taking from the Indian tribes ; they expected to find 
here nothing beyond peace and freedom, a place in 
which they could take their chance with Nature, and 
to which they could invite the Saints, their brethren, 
to a country of their own. Descending the passes 
with beating hearts and clanging trumpets, they en- 
tered on their lonely inheritance ; marched upon this 
slope above the Jordan, near the conical hill on which 
Brigham had seen the angel in his sleep ; laid down 
the plan of a new city; explored the canyons and 
water-courses into the hills ; and in a few days found, 
to their sudden joy, not only springs of fresh water, 
but woody nooks and grassy mounds and slopes. 

Not an hour was lost. " The first duty of a Saint 
when he comes to this valley," said Brigham Young 
to me, "is to learn how to grow a vegetable; after 
which he must learn how to rear pigs and fowls, to 
irrigate his land, and to build up his house. The rest 
will come in time." Ruled from the first by this 
practical genius, every man fell to his work. Des- 
eret — country of the Bee — was announced as the 



SETTLEMENT IN UTAH. 167 

Promised Land and future home of the Saints. It 
was to them as an unknown, unappropriated soil, and 
they hoped to found upon it an independent State. 



CHAPTER XXL 

SETTLEMENT IN UTAH. 

Soon the aspects of this desert valley began to 
change under their cunning hands ; creeks from the 
hills being coaxed into new paths; fields being 
cleared and sown ; homesteads rising from the 
ground ; sheep and cattle beginning to dot the hills ; 
salt-pits and saw-mills being established ; fruit-trees 
being planted, and orchards taught to bloom and 
bear. Roads were laid out and made. When the 
Mormon herdsmen entered the hill ravines, they 
found pine and cotton-wood, elder, birch, and box: 
materials precious for the building of their new 
homes. A new Jerusalem sprang from the ground; 
a temple was commenced; a newspaper was pub- 
lished. Walnut and other hard woods were planted 
in favorable spots. The red-skins who had long been 
the dread of all scouts and trappers in the far west, 
were won by courtesies and gifts ; and in a few 
months they appeared to have been changed from 
enemies of the white men into allies. " We found it 
cheaper," said Colonel Little, "to feed the Indians 
than to fight them;" and this policy of feeding the 
Utes and Shakes has been pursued b}' Young, with 
two or three brief intervals of misunderstanding, from 
the day of his first settlement in the valley. For two 



168 NEW AMU It IG A. 

or three trying years, the Saints of Salt Lake had to 
wage war against locusts and crickets, those plagues 
of the older Canaan ; but by help of gulls from the 
lakes, and of their own devices in trapping and 
pounding the insects, the Mormons contrived to pre- 
serve their crops of corn and fruit. A year went by, 
and the Mormons had not perished in the waste. On 
the contrary, they had begun to grow, and even to 
make money. Year after year they have increased 
in numbers and in wealth, until their merchants are 
known in London and New York, and their city has 
become a wonder of the earth. 

What are the secrets of this surprising growth of 
the new society out in these western deserts ? 

"Look around you," said Young to me, "if you 
want to know what kind of people we are. Nineteen 
3- ears ago this valley was a desert, growing nothing 
but the wild sage and the dwarf sunflower ; we who 
came into it brought nothing with us but a few oxen 
and wagons, and a bag of seeds and roots; the people 
who came after us, many of them weavers and arti- 
sans, brought nothing, not a cent, not even skill and 
usage of the soil ; and when you look from this bal- 
cony, you can see what we have made of it." 

How, above all other settlers in the waste lands 
of western America, have the Saints achieved this 
work? 

Is it an answer to say that these Saints are dupes 
and fanatics ? Nothing is easier than to laugh at Joe 
Smith and his church ; but what then ? The great 
facts remain. Young and his people are at Utah ; a 
church of two hundred thousand souls ; an army of 
twenty thousand rifles. You may smile at Joseph's 
gift of tongues ; his discovery of Urim and Thummim 
(which he supposed to have been a pair of specta- 



SETTLEMENT IN UTAH. 169 

cles !); his sword of Laban; his prose works of Abra- 
ham ; his Egyptian papyrus ; his Mormon paper 
money ; his thirty-nine trials. You may prove, with 
a swift and biting irony, that the weakest side of this 
new faith is the actual life of its founder; but will 
your wit disperse this camp of fanatics ? "Will your 
irony change the Utes and Shoshones into enemies 
of these Saints ? Will your arguments arrest those 
bands of missionaries which are employed in preach- 
ing, in a hundred places and to thousands of willing 
ears, the gospel as it was in Joseph ? The hour has 
gone by, as Americans feel, for treating this Church 
in sport. 

In England, though our soil is said to be the nurs- 
ery of the Saints, we have not yet learned to think of 
Mormonism otherAvise than as one of our many hu- 
mors ; as a rash that comes out from time to time in 
our social body; a sign, perhaps, of our occasional 
lack of health ; no one among us has learned to re- 
gard it as the symptom of a disease which may be 
Ij'ing at the seat of life. Has Convocation ever given 
up a day to the Book of Mormon ? Has a bishop 
ever visited the Saints in Commercial Road? Two 
or three ministers may have fired off pamphlets 
against them ; but have any of these reverend fathers 
been to see them in their London homes ? Rare, in- 
deed, has been this holy strife even* on the part of 
private men. But our brethren in America can 
hardly affect to treat the Saints in this easy style. 
The new Church is visible among them ; for good 
and evil it is in their system ; not a humor to be cast 
out like a rash upon the skin. Up to this time our 
own Saints have been taught to regard England as 
Egypt, and their old dwelling-place as exile from a 
brighter home. America is to them Canaan, Salt 
15 



170 ^-EW AMEBIC A. 

Lake City a New Jerusalem. I do not say that this 
is good for us, though it has an appearance of being 
good, since it relieves us of a painful duty, and removes 
from the midst of our cities a cause of shame. The 
poor, the aged, the feeble, among the Saints, may be 
left behind in our streets, to die, as they think and 
say, in the house of bondage; but the rich, the young, 
the zealous, are bound by their faith to go forward 
and possess themselves of the Promised Land. With 
the younger Saints, especially with the female Saints, 
a change of air is always recommended on a change 
of creed. Thousands emigrate, though it is also true 
that thousands remain behind. In London, Liver- 
pool, Glasgow, and in other cities, the other Saints 
have schools and chapels, books and journals, of 
which Oxford knows little, and Mayfair less. Not 
being a political sect, never asking for any right, 
never urging any wrong; content with doing their 
work in peace; they escape notice from the press, and 
engage the thoughts of society as little as the Mora- 
vians and the Plymouth Brethren. In London soci- 
ety you may hear in any one week more speculation 
about Prince and Home, the Abode of Love and the 
Spiritual Spheres, than you will hear about Young 
and Deseret in six months. The Saints are not in 
society ; but in Boston, Washington, and New York, 
these Mormons are a fearful portent, threatening to 
become a formidable power. Already they have put 
jurists into session and armies into motion. Colfax, 
the Speaker, has been to confer with Young; and 
committees of Congress are sitting on the aifairs of 
Utah. The day appears to be drawing nigh when 
the problems which these Mormons put before the 
world may have to be considered by practical men, 
not in colleges and chapels only, not in senates and in 



SETTLEMENT IN UTAH. 171 

courts of law only, but in tlie camp and in the battle- 
field. 

That question of how these Mormons are to be dealt 
with by the American people, is one of the strangest 
riddles of an age which has bridged the ocean, put a 
girdle of lightnings round the earth, and tamed to its 
service the fiery steeds of the sun. A true reply may 
be far to seek ; for we have not yet resolved, finally, 
how far thought is free from the control of law ; and 
to what extent toleration of creeds implies toleration 
of the conduct which springs from creeds. One step 
in advance towards such a reply must be an attempt 
to find what Mormonism is, and by what means it has 
grown. It cannot be put aside as either unmixed fool- 
ishness or unalloyed vice. Strange as the new secta- 
rians may seem to us, they must have in their keeping 
some grain of truth. They live and thrive, and men 
who live by their own labor, thrive by their own en- 
terprise, cannot be altogether mad. Their streets are 
clean, their houses bright, their gardens fruitful. 
Peace reigns in their cities. Harlots and drunkards 
are unknown among them. They keep open more 
common schools than any other sect in the United 
States. But being what they are, believing what they 
do, their merits are perhaps more trying to our patience 
than their crimes. It is thought that many persons in 
the United States would be able to endure them a 
little better if they would only behave themselves a 
good deal worse. 

What have these Saints achieved? 

In the midst of a ft-ee people, they have founded a 
despotic power. In a land which repudiates state reli- 
gions, they have placed their church above human 
laws. Among a society of Anglo-Saxons, they have 
introduced some of the ideas, many of the practices, 



172 ^^^W AMERICA. 

of Red Indian tribes, of the Utes, Shoshones, and 
Snakes. In the nineteenth century after Christ, tliey 
have revived the social habits which were common in 
Syria nineteen hundred years before his birth. 

Hints for their system of government may have 
been found nearer home than Hauran, in less respect- 
able quarters than the Bible. The Shoshone wigwam 
could have supplied the Saints with a nearer model 
of a plural household than the Patriarch's tent; but 
this fact, if it were true, would hardly be confessed 
by Kimball and Young. As they state their case, 
Abraham is their perfect man ; who forsook his home, 
his kindred, and his country, for the sake of God. 
Sarah is their perfect woman ; because she called her 
husband lord, and gave her handmaid Hagar into his 
bosom for a wife. Everything that Abraham did, 
they pronounce it right for them to do ; all gospels 
and commandments of the Church, all laws and insti- 
tutes of man, being void and of no eifect when quoted 
against the practices of that Arab sheikh. Putting 
under their feet both the laws of science and the les- 
sons of history, they preach the duty of going back, 
in the spirit and in the name, to that priestly and pa- 
ternal form of government which existed in Syria 
four thousand years ago ; casting from them, as so 
much waste, the things which all other white men 
have learned to regard as the most precious conquests 
of time and thought — personal freedom, family life, 
change of rulers, right of speech, concurrence in laws, 
equality before the judge, liberty of writing and voting. 
They cast aside these conquests of time and thought 
in favor of Asiatic obedience to a man without birth, 
without education, whom they have chosen to regard 
as God's own vicar on the earth. No Pope in Eome, 
no Czar in Moscow, no Caliph in Bagdad, ever exer- 



WOBK AND FAITH. 173 

cised such power as the Mormons have conferred on 
Young. " I am one of those men," said to me Elder 
Stenhouse — perhaps the man of highest culture whom 
we saw at Salt Lake City — "who think that Brother 
Brigham ought to do everything; he has made this 
church, and he ought to have his way in everything." 
Many others said the same thing, in nearly the same 
words. No one would dispute Young's will. "A 
man had better go to hell at once," said Stenhouse, 
"if he cannot meet Brigham's eye." In a caste of 
Hindoos, in a family of Kirghis, in a tribe of Bedou- 
ins, such an act of prostration would have seemed 
to me strange ; in free America, among the country^ 
men of Sydney and Washington, coming from the 
lips of a writer who could make jokes and quote the 
last poem, and who is enough American to carry two 
revolvers in his pockets, it was more than strange. It 
was a sign. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

WORK AND FAITH. 

Joseph Smith, a poor lad, born m Sharon, Windsor 
County, Vermont, the son of unlettered parents, had 
been crazed by one of those revivals which Elder 
Frederick, the Shaker preacher at Mount Lebanon, 
regards as the providential season of religious life. 
This untaught boy had begun to work upon the pas- 
sions which he felt in play around him ; announcing, 
like many others, but with more insistence than his 
fellows, that in his trances of body, he had received 
15* 



174 NEW AMEBIC A. 

angelic visitors, that he had spoken with God face to 
face, that he had been chosen to plant a new Church 
on earth ; a Church of America, the new Canaan, 
chosen from the beginnings of time to be the home of 
a new creed and the seat of a new empire. Men who 
had come to hear him had gone away converted ; he 
had told them that a new priesthood had been chosen, 
that God had planted His kingdom once again ; they 
had left him convinced, and gone away from his 
presence carrying these glad tidings into thousands of 
Christian homes. No force had been used, none 
could have been used in that early stage of their 
career ; for the Saints had then no weapon save the 
word ; they toiled in a pacific vineyard, and niade 
their conquests in the face of vigilant foes. A fair 
hearing for their gospel, an open field for their preach- 
ers, were all they had asked, and more than what they 
had received. They sent no Klialed to the nations, 
with his offer of either conversion, slavery, or death ; 
not because such a line of policy would have been 
contrary to the genius of their creed ; but simply 
because, in a free state, and under a secular law, they 
had found no means for carrying out their plans. 
From the day of their dawn an Arab spirit had been 
strong upon them. Should a time ever come, when 
they can cut their withes and buckle on their swords, 
they may be found fierce as Gideon, ruthless as Omar ; 
but in the past they have been obliged to occuj^y the 
ground of a suffering rather than that of a militant 
Church. Everything done by them as yet, has been 
effected by word of mouth, by what they describe as 
the power of truth. 

How have these settlers in the wilderness done the 
things we see ? 

Simply, answers Young, by the power of work and 



WOBK AND FAITH. 175 

faith ; by doing what they profess, by believing what 
they say. 

Nearly all the forces which are found most powerful 
to sway men's minds in our lay societies, — genius, 
reputation, office, birth, and riches, — have been want- 
ing to these Saints. No man of the stamp of Luther, 
Calvin, Wesley, has appeared among them. In 
intellect, Joseph was below contempt. Brigham is a 
man of keen good sense. Pratt is a dreamer. Kimball 
is unlettered. Wells, Cannon, Taylor, Hooper, — the 
brightest men among them, — have shown no worldly 
gifts, no scholarship, eloquence, poetry, and logic, to 
account for such sudden and sustained success as they 
have met with in every land. 

The bee has been chosen by the Saints as an emblem 
of Deseret, though nature has all but denied that insect 
to this dry and flowerless land. Young's house is 
called the Beehive ; in it no drone ever finds a place ; 
for the Prophet's wives are bound to support them- 
selves by needle-craft, teaching, spinning, dyeing yarn, 
and preserving fruit. Every woman in Salt Lake has 
her portion of work, each according to her gifts, every 
one steadfastly believing that labor is noble and holy ; 
a sacrifice meet for man to make, and for God to 
accept. Ladies make gloves and fans, dry peaches 
and figs, cut patterns, prepare seeds, weave linen and 
knit hose. Lucy and Emiline, sometimes called the 
lights of Brigham's harem, are said to be prodigies of 
skill in the embroidery of flowers. Some of Emiline's 
needlework is certainly fine, and Susan's potted 
peaches are beyond compare. On men fall the heavier 
toils of the field, the ditch, and the hill-side, where 
they break the ground, dam up the river, fell the 
maple and the dwarf-oak, pasture the cattle, and catch 
the wild horse. But the sexes take each their share of 



176 NEW AMERICA. 

a common task : rearing houses, planting gardens, 
starting workshops, digging mines ; each with a strain 
of energ}^ and passion never found on the eastern 
slopes of this Wasatch chain. 

The ministry is unprofessional and unpaid. Every 
Saint being a priest, no man in the church is suiFered 
to accept a cent for his service, even though his time, 
his faculties, his life itself, should be spent in doing 
what his brethren regard as the work of God. Duty 
to the church comes first; duty to the family, to the 
individual, comes next ; but with such an interval as 
puts collision and confusion utterly out of question. 

Prophets, presidents, bishops, elders, all pursue 
their avocations in the city and on the soil ; sell rib- 
bons, grow peaches, build mills, cut timber, keep 
ranches, herd cattle, drive trains. One day, we met a 
venerable man, with a small basket on his arm, covered 
with a snow-white napkin ; his appearance struck us ; 
and we learned that he was Joseph Young, elder 
brother of Brigham, and President of the Sevent3\ 
He was taking his basket of peaches to market for 
sale. 

An apostle holds the plough, a patriarch drives a 
team. In a city where work is considered holy, the 
brightest dignitary gains in popular repute by engaging 
in labor and in trade. These Saints have not one idle 
gentleman in their church. Brigham Young is a 
mill-owner, cotton-planter, farmer ; Heber Kimball is 
a mill-owner, grazier, manufacturer of linseed oil ; 
George Smith is a farmer and miller ; Orson Pratt is 
a teacher of mathematics; Orson Hyde is a farmer; 
John Taylor, formerly a wood-turner, is now a mill- 
owner; Wilford "Woodruff IS a farmer and grazier; 
George Cannon is a printer and editor. These men 
are the foremost lights in the church, and thev are all 



WOBK AND FAITH. 177 

men of laborious, secular habits. Young, Kimball, 
Taylor, are now rich men ; the twelve apostles are 
said to be mostly poor ; but whether they are rich or 
poor, these Mormon elders live on what they can earn 
by the labor of their hands and brains, taking nothing, 
it is said, for their loftier services in the church. 

The unpaid functions of a bishop are extremely 
numerous ; for a Mormon prelate has to look, not 
merely to the spiritual welfare of his flock, but to 
their worldly interest and wellbeing ; to see that 
their farms are cultivated, their houses clean, their 
children taught, their cattle lodged. Last Sunday, 
after service at the Taljernacle, Brigham Young sent 
for us to the raised dias on which he and the digni- 
taries had been seated, to see a private meeting of the 
bishops, and to hear what kind of work these reverend 
fathers had met to do. We rather wondered what 
our friends at Bishopsthorpe and Wells would think 
of such a scene. The old men gathered in a ring; 
and Edward Hunter, their presiding bishop, questioned 
each and all, as to the work going on in his ward, the 
building, painting, draining, gardening; also as to 
what this man needed, and that man needed, in the 
way of help. An emigrant train had just come in, 
and the bishops had to put six hundred persons in the 
way of growing their cabbages and building their 
homes. One bishop said he could take five brick- 
layers, another two carpenters, a third a tinman, a 
fourth seven or eight farm-servants, and so on through 
the whole bench. In a few minutes I saw that two 
hundred of these poor emigrants had been placed in 
the way of earning their daily bread. "This," said 
Young, with a sly little smile, " is one of the labors 
of our bishops." I confess, I could not see much 
harm in it. 



178 NUW AMEBIC A. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

MISSIONARY LABOR. 

The spirit of the Mormon church may best be read 
in the missionary labors of these Saints. It is their 
boast, that when they go out to convert the Gentiles, 
they carry with them no purse, no scrip ; that they go 
forth, naked and alone, to do the Lord's work in the 
Lord's way ; trusting in no arm of flesh, in no p6wer 
of gold ; taking no thought of what they shall eat and 
where they shall lie down ; but putting their lives and 
fortunes wholly in the hands of God. 

The way in which an elder may be called to such 
missionary work has, in this age of dollars, an air of 
primitive romance. Young (say) is walking down 
Main Street; he sees a young fellow driving a team, 
galloping a horse, riding in a cart ; a thought comes 
into his prophetic mind ; and, calling that young elder 
to his side, he tells him that the Lord has chosen him 
to go forth and preach, mentioning, perhaps, the period 
and the place ; the time may be for one year, for three 
years, for ten years ; the localit}'- may be in Liverpool, 
in Damascus, in Delhi, in Pekin. Asking only a few 
hours' time to put his house in order, to take leave of 
his friends, to kiss his wives and children, that young 
elder, chosen from the street, will start on his errand 
of grace. 

I have talked with a dozen of such missionaries; 
young men who have been called from the ranch, from 
the saw-mill, from the peach-garden, at a moment's 
notice, to depart without purse or scrip, to go forth, 
naked and alone, into the ends of the earth. Elder 



MISSIONARY LABOR. 179 

Stenhouse had been sent to labor in France and Switz- 
erland, Elder Riter in Austria, Elder Naisbit in 
England, Elder Dewey in India and Ceylon. Their 
method was the same. 

Without money and without food, the missionary 
starts on his journey; hiring himself as a driver, a 
guard, a carpenter, to some train of merchandise going 
either towards the river or towards the sea, as the case 
may be. If his sphere is Europe, the young elder 
works as a laborer to New York, where he hires him- 
self out either as a clerk, or as a mechanic, according 
to his gifts, until he can save his passage-money ; if 
this course is inconvenient to him, either as to his per- 
son or his mission, he agrees with some skipper to 
serve before the mast, on which he will take his place 
humbly with the poor sailors, to whom, as the ship 
heaves onward, he tinds many opportunities for preach- 
ing the glad tidings of a Mormon's rest in the Valley 
of the Mountains. He is not a man of books. " We have 
no colleges here," said Young, " to train our young 
men to be fools; we just take a fellow from the hills, 
who has been felling wood, killing bears, and catching 
wild colts ; we send him out on a mission, and he 
comes back to us a man." Arrived in Europe, without 
a penny, without a home, the missionary finds, if he 
can, a lodging in the house of some local saint. If he 
cannot find such lodging, he sleeps on a bench, on a 
stone step, under a tree, among the litter of a dock. 
"I landed in Southampton," said Elder Stenhouse, 
when relating his many victories of the spirit, " without 
a farthing in my purse, and I sold the boots from my 
feet to buy a plank from which I could preach." Elder 
Dewey told me he had travelled from Salt Lake to 
San Francisco, from San Francisco to Ceylon, from 
Ceylon to Poonah, toiling, preaching, begging, never 



180 NEW AMERICA. 

fearing for the flesh, but confiding everywhere and 
always in the protection of God ; laboring among Cali- 
fornia miners, among Chinese sailors, among Cinga- 
lese farmers, among Bombay teamsters and muleteers, 
seldom wanting for a shelter, never wanting for a 
meal. Such is the si3irit of the young Mormon elder. 
Sometimes he is helped forward by a Saint, oftentimes 
by a stranger and a Gentile ; at the worst, he gets em- 
ployment as a tailor, as a carj^enter, as a dock-yard 
laborer. Living on crusts of bread, sleeping beneath 
lowly roofs, he toils and preaches from town to town, 
ardent in the doing of his daily task ; patient, absti- 
nent, obscure ; courting no notice, rousing no debates ; 
living the poor man's life; oftering himself everywhere 
as the poor man's friend. When his task is done, he 
will preach his way back from the scene of his labor 
to his pleasant home, to his thriving farm, to his busy 
mill, in the valley of the Great Salt Lakck 

In this Mormon city, where every man is an elder, 
almost every man is a priest. Any Saint, therefore, 
ma}^ be called to these missionary toils ; and no Eastern 
slave obeys his master with such swift alacrity as that 
which is shown by the Saint who is called by Young 
to start for a distant land. 

The glad tidings which men like Dewey and Sten- 
house scatter among deck-passengers, dock-men, street- 
porters, farm-servants, and their fellows, are of a 
kind which the desolate and the discontented long 
to hear. They pronounce against the world and the 
world's ways. They declare the need for a great 
change ; they promise the poor man merrier times 
and a brighter home. They offer the starving bread, 
the houseless roofs, the naked clothes. To the crafts- 
man they promise mi-lls, to the peasant farms. The 
heaven of which they tell is not placed by them 



MISSIONARY LABOR. 181 

wholly beyond the grave; earth itself is, in their 
opinion, a part of heaven ; and as the earth and all 
that is in it are the Lord's, they announce that these 
riches of the earth are the true inheritance of His 
saints. The rich, they say, have corrupted the faith 
of Christ, and the churches of the rich are engaged 
in the devil's work. They represent Joseph as a pastor 
of the poor. They suggest that ignorance is a saving 
virtue, and that lowly people are the favorites of God. 
Other churches besides that of the Saints hold some 
of these gospels ; but the Mormon preacher is seen to 
act as though he believed them to be true. Show the 
young missionary a beggar, an outcast, a thief, — one 
who is in despair and ready to perish, — and he will 
act as though he considered himself chosen of God 
to save that miserable wretch. With men who appear 
in fine clothes, who dwell in great houses, who dine 
off silver plate, he has no concern. His task lies in 
Five Points, not in Madison Square ; in Seven Dials, 
not in Park Lane. The rich, the learned, the polite, 
have their own creeds and rituals, beyond his power to 
either mend or mar. The}' have no need of him, and 
he never seeks them in their pride. What could he 
say to them ? Would they listen to his promise of a 
brighter day? Would they care for his paradise of 
farms and pastures ? Passing these worldlings by, as 
men to whom he has not been sent, the Saint goes 
lower in the scale of life ; seeking out those victims 
of the world for whom no one but himself appears to 
care. lu the wants and cravings of the poor he finds 
an opening for his message. But he does not praise 
the lowly for being poor ; he does not lead them to 
infer that a state of pauperism is a state of grace ; his 
doctrine is, that riches are good things ; and he holds 
out a promise, which he can back by a thousand ex- 
10 



182 NEW AMEBIC A. 

amples, that the Saints will become rich by the toil of 
their hands and by the blessing of God. To men 
hungering after lauds and houses, the prosperity which 
he can truly describe as existing in Deseret, and which 
he warmly invites them to come and share, is a great 
and potential fact. 

Care of the poor is written down strongly in the 
Mormon code of sacred duties. A bishop's main 
function is to see that no man in his ward, in his 
county, is in want of food and raiment ; when he finds 
that a poor family is in need, he goes to his more pros- 
perous neighbor, and in the Lord's name demands 
from him a sack of wheat, a can of tea, a loaf of 
sugar, a blanket, a bed ; knowing that his requisition 
will be promptly met. The whole earth is the Lord's, 
and must be rendered up to Him. Elder Jennings, 
the richest merchant in Salt Lake City, told me of 
many such requisitions being made upon himself; in 
bad times, they may come upon him twice or thrice a 
day. Li case of need, the bishop goes up to the 
Tithing office and obtains the succor of which his 
parishioner stands in need ; for the wants of the poor 
take precedence of the wants of the church ; but the 
appeal from personal benevolence to the public fund 
has seldom to be made. For if a Saint has any kind 
of store, he must share it with his fellow ; if he has 
bread, he must feed the hungry ; if he has raiment, 
he must clothe the naked. No excuse avails him for 
neglect of this great duty. The command to sell 
what we have, and give the money to the poor, is to 
most of us an empty rule ; but the Mormon, like the 
Arab and the Jew, whose spirit he has had breathed 
into him, knows nothing of such pious fictions. " Feed 
my flock," is to him an injunction that admits of no 
denial, and of no delay. 



MISSIONARY LABOR. 183 

A special fund is raised for the relief of necessitous 
Saints ; and Young himself, the servant of all, dis- 
charges in person the troublesome duties of this trust. 
I went with Bishop Hunter, a good and merry old 
man, full of work and humor, to the emigrants' corral, 
to see the rank and file of the new English arrivals; 
six hundred people from the Welsh hills and from the 
Midland shires ; men, women, and children ; all poor 
and uncomely, weary, dirty, freckled with the sun, 
scorbutic from privation ; when I was struck by the 
tender tones of his voice, the wisdom of his counsel, 
the fatherly solicitude of his manner in dealing with 
these poor people. Some of the women were ill and 
querulous ; they wanted butter, they wanted tea ; 
they wanted many things not to be got in the corral. 
Hunter sent for a doctor from the city, and gave or- 
ders for tea and butter on the Tithing ofiice. E"ever 
shall I forget the yearning thankfulness of expression 
which beamed from some of these sufiierers' eyes. 
The poor creatures felt that in this aged bishop they 
had found a wise and watchful friend. 

Yet the Saints, as a rule, are not poor in the sense 
in which the Irish are poor; not needy as a race, a 
body, and a church ; indeed, for a new society, start- 
ing with nothing, and having its fortunes to make by 
labor, they are rich. Utah is sprinkled with farms 
and gardens ; the hill-sides are pictured with flocks 
and herds ; and the capital city, the New Jerusalem, 
is finely laid out and nobly built. Every man labors 
with his hand and brain ; the people are frugal ; their 
fields cost them nothing ; and the wealth created by 
their industry is great. To multiply flocks and herds, 
to lay up corn and wheat, is with them to obey the 
commands of God. 



184 ^^W AMERICA. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

MORMON LIGHT. 

Fully to comprehend these Saints, you must look 
beyond the beauty of their cit}--, the prosperity of 
their farms, the activity of their workshops, the extent 
of their villages, into the spiritual sources of their 
strength, 

Joseph taught his disciples a doctrine by no means 
new ; that in every religion there is a germ of good, 
and perhaps a germ of evil ; and he proposed by divine 
assistance (and the aid of Rigdon, Young, and Pratt), 
to extract the grain of good out of everj^ old creed, 
and add it to the church which he was founding for 
his people. He took much from Mohammed, more 
from Paul, most of all from Abraham ; but in his free 
handling of religious notions, he had no scruple about 
borrowing from the Hindoos, from the Tartars, from 
the Mohawks. The doctrinal notes of his church may 
be numbered and explained: — 

1. God is a person, with the form and flesh of man. 

2. Man is a part of the substance of God, and will 
himself become a god. 

3. Man is not created by God, but existed from all 
eternity, and will exist to all eternity. 

4. Man is not born in sin, and is not accountable for 
offences other than his own. 

5. The earth is a colony of embodied spirits, one of 
many such settlements in space. 

6. God is President of the Immortals, having under 
him four orders of beings: (1), Gods — that is to say, 
immortal beings, possessed of a perfect organization 



MORMON LIGHT. 185 

of soul and body ; being the final state of men who 
have lived on earth in perfect obedience to the law; 
(2), Angels — immortal beings, who have lived on 
earth in imperfect obedience to the law ; (3), Men — 
immortal beings, in whom a living soul is united with 
a human body; (4), Spirits — immortal beings, still 
waiting to receive their tabernacle of flesh. 

7. Man, being one of the race of gods, becomes 
eligible, by means of marriage, for a celestial throne ; 
his household of wives and children being his king- 
dom, not on earth only, but in heaven. 

8. The Kingdom of God has been again founded on 
the earth ; the time has come for the Saints to take 
possession of their own ; but by virtue, not by vio- 
lence ; by industry, not by force. 

Joseph would appear to have got nearly all these 
doctrines from Eigdon and Pratt. Pratt — the lead- 
ing scholar of the Mormon Church — too much of a 
scholar for Young to comprehend and tolerate, has 
laid down, in various books and lectures, a cosmogony 
of heaven and earth, which Young has strictly warned 
us not to receive as truth. Once, if not more than 
once, Pratt's writings have been formally condemned 
by the First Presidency and by the Twelve ; though 
he still continues to hold rank as an apostle. " But 
for me," said Brigham, smiling, "he would have been 
thrust out of the church long ago," When we put 
the doctrine of spirit and matter inculcated by Pratt 
before the President for his opinion, he said, impa- 
tiently, "We know nothing about it; it may be all 
true, it may be all false ; we have no light as to those 
things 3'et." What has been stated above in the num- 
bered paragraphs is oiiicial doctrine taught in the Mor- 
mon schools, from the catechism written by Elder 
Jacques, and formally adopted by Young, 
16* 



186 NEW AMEBIC A. 

These propositions would seem to have been drawn 
by the Saints from the oldest and newest mythologies 
under heaven. 

The Mormon God appears to be the same in nature 
and shape as Homer's Zeus. Their Angels are not 
uidike the beni-elohim of St. Paul ; not angels and 
spirits in the old English sense, but rather bodiless 
and unseen beings, as of line air and invisible flame. 
Their Men, as beings which are uncreated, indestruc- 
tible, are the creations of Pythagoras ; and as beings 
born without sin, accountable only for their own evil 
deeds, are the fancies of Swedenborg. 

Some confusion has arisen, in Utah and elsewhere, 
as to the Mormon doctrine of angels — a confusion 
caused by the reveries and speculations of Orson Pratt. 
Young had been good enough to teach us the true 
and official belief of his church on this curious subject. 
Angels, he says, are imperfect beings, incapable of 
rising into the higher grade of gods, to whom they are 
now, and will be forever, the messengers, ministers, 
and servants. They are immortal beings who have 
passed through the stage of spirits in space, and of 
men on earth, but who have not fulfilled the law of 
life, not spent their strength in perfect obedience to 
the will of God. Hence they have been arrested in 
their growth towards the higher state. On my asking 
in what they had failed to observe the law. Young 
answered, "Li not living the patriarchal life — in not 
marrying man 3^ wives, like Abraham and Jacob, David 
and Solomon ; like all those men who are called in 
Scripture the friends of God." In fact, according to 
Young, angels are the souls of bachelors and monog- 
amists, beings incapable of issue, unblessed with female 
companions, unfitted to reign and rule in the celestial 
spheres. In the next world, my friend and myself — 



MORMON LIGHT. 187 

he being unmarried as yet — and I having only one 
wife — may only aspire to the rank of bachelor angels, 
while Young and Kimball are to sit, surrounded by 
their queens, on celestial thrones ! 

These notes of the faith, as it is held in Salt Lake 
City — as it is taught in our own midst — in the Welsh 
mountains, in the Midland shires, among the Mersey 
dockmen, in the Whitechapel slums — mystical though 
they read in the main, exert a mighty spell over the 
imagination and a mighty power upon the actual life 
of their people. Nothing is useless in the Mormon 
system ; Nanak himself was not more practical in his 
reforms than Young. Faith is their principle of action ; 
what they believe they do ; and those who would com- 
prehend the position taken up by these Saints on earth 
— defended by twenty thousand rifles — must try to 
understand what they think of heaven. 

Like the Moslems, the Mormons are a praying people. 
Religion being their life, every action of the day, 
whether social or commercial, is considered by them 
in reference to what may be conceived as the will of 
God. Hence, they have little respect for policy, cau- 
tion, compromise ; they seem to live without fear ; they 
take no account of the morrow ; but trust for safety, 
succor, and success, to Heaven, and to Heaven alone. 
Refer, in speaking with them, to the Chicago platform; 
one of the planks of which is the suppression of po- 
lygamy by force, and they only smile at your worldly 
wisdom, and tell you they are living the divine life, 
and that God will know how to protect His own. 
Hint to them that Young is mortal, and will one day 
need a successor ; again they smile at your want of 
understanding, saying they have nothing to do with 
such things ; that God is wise and strong, capable of 
raising up servants to guide His church. Their whole 



1 88 NEW A ME EI A. 

dependence seems to be on God. It is right to add — 
as a point within my knowledge — that they also take 
good care to keep their powder dry. 

Confidence in the divine power to help and save 
them is not so much the effect of weakness and hu- 
mility, as of strength and pride. Young puts man 
much higher in the scale of being than any Christian 
priest has ever done ; higher, perhaps, than any Moslem 
mollah ; though the Koran makes the angels dwelling 
in Paradise servants of the faithful who are gathered 
to their rest. Bab in Persia, I^anak in the Punjab, 
go beyond Mohammed ; teaching their scholars that 
man is part of the personality of God; but Young 
describes man as an uncreated, indestructible portion 
of the Highest; a being wnth the faculty of raising 
an order of immortal and unbodied spirits into the 
exalted rank of gods. How much a high belief in 
man's rights and powers, as a son of God, and a special 
favorite of Heaven, can steady the soul in danger, and 
nerve the arm in battle, was seen in every conflict of 
the Jews, and is written in every history of the Sikhs. 

The secular notes of the Mormon Society maj- be 
gathered into three large groups: — (1) Those which 
define its relations to man as a member and as a 
stranger; (2) Those which define the method and the 
principle of its government ; (3) Those which define 
the condition of its family life. 



SECULAR NOTES. 189 

CHAPTER XXV. 

SECULAR NOTES. 

The first group of secular notes embraces two lead- 
ing ideas. 

1. The new church, established in Utah, though it 
is called the Church of America, is free, and (with one 
passing exception) open to all the world ; to men of 
every race, clime, creed, and color ; taking into its 
bosom the Jew from New York, the Buddhist from 
San Francisco, the Parsee from Calcutta, the Wesleyan 
from Liverpool, the Moslem from Cairo, the Cheyenne 
from Smoky Hill River. 

The one passing exception is the Negro. " The 
Negro," Brigham said to me this morning, "is a de- 
scendant of Cain, the first murderer, and his darkness 
is a curse put on his skin by God." Only one Negro 
has ever yet been admitted into brotherhood with the 
Saints : the act of Joseph, done at Nauvoo. Until 
God shall have removed this curse. Young will have 
none of these Cainites in his church. 

2. The new church not only receives all comers, but 
tolerates all dissenters; asking no questions, putting 
no test, demanding no sacrifice. Thus, a man of any 
other creed may be enrolled among the Saints without 
losing his identity; without breaking his idols, without 
rooting up his faith, without shedding his habits ; in a 
word, without that spiritual change which Christians 
understand as being born to a new life. The convert 
to Mormonism accepts a new truth, in addition to the 
truths wdiich he may have held beforetime. Joseph 
is proposed to him as a reconciler, not as a separator; 



190 NEW A3IERIGA. 

the Saints insisting that there is some good in every 
form of religion, and that no sect on earth enjoys a 
monopoly in the love of God. 

Let us look into these two leading ideas, not in their 
dogmatical, but in their political aspects : 

The Church is free and open. In its first appeals, a 
new creed has commonly been proposed to a particu- 
lar race, its ritual adapted to a special zone. We see 
in history so many examples of such appeals succeed- 
ing on the spot, and failing everywhere beyond it, 
that students are apt to deny the possibility of a com- 
mon faith, and to treat religion as an aifair of climate 
and of race. The law of Moses made few converts 
beyond the Hebrew tHbes. 'Confucius filids no fol- 
lowers out of China. The Great Spirit only reigns in 
the American woods. The Guebres have never car- 
ried their worship out of Persia aiid India. Dagon 
was a local god, the symbol of a people fond of the 
sea. Thor is a denizen of the frozen !North. Brahma 
is only known to Hindoos, who make no converts; 
and 80 strictly is this law of living apart, for them- 
selves only, fixed in the Hindoo's habits of thought, 
that a man of one caste can never pass into another ; 
a Brahman born must remain a Brahman ; a Sudra 
born must remain a Sudra all his life. Buddhism has, 
in some respects, the character of a universal church, 
having drawn to itself many tribes and nations, and 
become the chief religion of the world, if the mere 
number of its temples and congregations could confer 
that rank ; yet, among the four hundred of millions of 
men who worship Buddha, there is no instance of a 
people having ever been converted to the faith in 
whom the reception of his creed had not been pre- 
pared by a natural inclination towards the Oriental 
belief in transmigration of souls ; so that Buddhism 



SECULAR NOTES. 191 

itself, however widely it may be diflused throughout 
the earth, is but the religion of a particular race. 
Islam is the creed of Arabia and the Arabs. When 
carried eastward to the Ganges, westward to the Gua- 
dalquiver, it was borne forward on the points of a 
myriad lances, not received by the people of India and 
of Spain on its merits as a saving faith ; and, being 
neither a natural growth nor a free adoption in those 
countries, it wore itself out in Spain, while in Persia 
and India it has rooted itself chiefly among men of 
Semitic race. ISTanak in the Punjab, Bab in Persia, 
may be said to have founded sects on a wider plan 
than most other religious leaders : for the Sikhs and 
Babees are both missionary churches, taking their own 
from among Moslem, Buddhist, and Hindoo flocks; yet 
the notion of having one free and open church, which 
should make the brown man and the white man, the 
black man and the red man, brothers and equals, has 
scarcely ever yet dawned upon these fiery advocates 
of faith. 

Thus, nearly all our creeds have either some open 
or some latent reference to condition. An ancient 
legend says that the Arabian prophet told his fol- 
lowers they would prevail in arms and plant the true 
faith wherever the palms bore fruit ; a legend which 
has been almost verified in fact for a thousand years ; 
but Mohammed never dreamt of oftering his half- 
ti'opical system of social life to the white barbarians 
of the North ; to hungry hunters beyond the Euxine, 
to frozen woodsmen of the Helvetic Alps. His rule 
of rejecting wine and pork, wise enough on the Nile 
and on the Jordan, would have been wasteful of na- 
ture on the Danube and the Elbe. His code was 
written for the palm-bearing zones, and within those 
zones it has always thriven. No Babee is found set- 



192 iVj5?l^ AMERICA. 

tied out of Persia, no Sildi out of Upper India; in 
each case a man finds liis religious rites adapted to 
the country in which he dwells. 

Christianity itself, though nobler in spirit, tougher 
in framework, than any of these geographical creeds, 
has yet very much the appearance of being mainly the 
religion of the Gothic race. Although our creed 
sprang up in Palestine, and flourished for some years 
in Egypt and Syria, it never took hold of the Semitic 
mind, never rooted itself in the Semitic soil. No Arab 
tribe has been finally won to the cross, just as no 
Gothic tribe has finally been gained to the Crescent. 
The half Oriental churches which remain in Africa 
and Asia — the Abyssinian, the Coptic, the Armenian 
— have no connection with the great Arabian family 
of man. In fact, no branch of the Christian society 
has ever yet clearly put forth the pretension of ofl:er- 
ing itself to all nations as a free and open church; we 
pride ourselves on being local and exclusive — Greeks, 
Latins, Anglicans, Lutherans — rather than branches 
of one living, universal church. The largest Christian 
community on earth defines its catholicity as Roman 
and Apostolic, instead of aiming to include the world 
and owning no founder except Jesus Christ. 

How much power is lost by the existence of this 
parish spirit in our churches, a statesman feels the 
instant that some object, common to the whole Chris- 
tian society, comes into view ; such as that question 
of the Holy Sepulchre which, only a dozen years ago, 
drove the Euss and Frank into fraternal strife. 

The neiv church is tolerant of differences in belief and 
habits of life. — Laymen like More and Locke have 
written most eloquently on the policy of tolerating all 
kinds of opinion; but no large branch of the Christian 
Church has ever yet entered on the practice of their 



SECULAR NOTES. 193 

liberal views. On no better ground than a difference 
of opinion as to points which only the highest intel- 
lects can master, Greek, Roman, Lutheran, Dutch, 
Genevan, are at deadly feud ; mocking each other's 
rites, impugning each other's motives, condemning 
each other's actions ; saying evil things, doing evil 
works to their brethren, with a bitterness of hate in- 
creasing with the narrowness of their dividing lines. 
To wit, the prelates of Rome and England go on 
damning each other from fast to feast with a ferocity 
which they would shrink from displajang towards an 
Imam in Egypt, a Gosain in Bengal, a prophet at 
Salt Lake. We make watch-words and warn-words 
to prevent people from coming near us who might 
otherwise share in our gospel of love and peace. With 
as little ruth as the Gileadite swordsmen felt towards 
the flying bands on the Jordan, we slay all brethren 
who either can not or will not pronounce our shibbo- 
leth. 

As our Founder left it, the Church was loving and 
merciful ; as men have made it, it is hard and cruel as 
a Hindoo caste. A Brahman does not stand aloof 
from a Sudra with fiercer pride than a Greek Chris- 
tian shows towards a Copt. Even at the cradle and 
at the the tomb of Christ, we fight for our parish 
creeds, until the very Bedouins, who have to part the 
quarrelling disciples, blush for shame. Is it better in 
London, Rome, and Moscow, than in Bethlehem and 
Zion? Do the hundred Hindoo sects revile each 
other in a darker spirit than our own congregations ? 
Who will say it? A worshipper of Vishna may live 
in the same convent as a worshipper of Siva, and the 
two Hindoo hermits will dwell in their narrow den in 
peace. Plow would it fare in the same shed with a 
Calvinist and a Catholic ? Chaitanya taught the fine 

n 



1 94 NEW A ME RICA. 

truth that faith aholishes and replaces caste ; so that 
Brahman, Kshatrya, Vaisya, and Sudra, whatever their 
rank and state may be on earth, are equals and broth- 
ers in the sight of God. Some Christians preach the 
same ; but where is the national church that has 
adopted this beneficent truth? Why, a Greek will 
not allow that a Latin can be saved from hell, and 
every Armenian monk believes that his Coptic rival 
will be burnt in everlasting fire. Our churches, even 
on our parish greens, are worn and torn by internal 
feuds. Of all races on the earth, the Anglo-Saxon is, 
in matter of thought and speech, the most liberal, the 
most tolerant ; yet we have had our lurid Smithfield 
fires, and our list of martyrs lengthens into a mighty 
host. "Within the existing pale we have a High Church 
faction fighting a Low Church faction, much as Hana- 
fees strive against Malikees in the orthodox Arab 
mosque. Some writers see a spiritual good in this 
wide separation of sect from sect ; but the political 
results of it are not to be concealed.; and these results 
are, in England strife, in Europe bloodshed, in Pales- 
tine the occupation of our Holy Places by the Turk. 
A tolerant Church would save society from enormous 
waste of power. 



HIGH POLITICS. 195 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

HIGH POLITICS. 

The second group of secular notes — those notes 
which define the method and the principle of Mormon 
government — ascend into the highest region of politics. 
Three points may be mentioned as of supreme impor- 
tance for the understanding of this peculiar people. 

(1.) The new church assumes that God is in personal 
contact with his Saints ; guiding them now, as He did 
in past times, as He will do in future times, by a re- 
velation of his will through a chosen seer ; not in 
their great affairs only, their battles, famines, and mi- 
grations, but also in their rural and domestic troubles, 
such as the planting of fields, the building of a store, 
and the sealing of a wife. 

(2.) The new church asserts that true worship is true 
enjoyment; a blessing from on high, bountifully given 
by a father to his children ; not a tribute levied by a 
prince, not a penance exacted by a priest ; but a light 
and innocent play, a gladness in the spirit and in the 
flesh ; a sense of duty being done, of service accepted, 
and of life refreshed. 

(3.) In the new church work is honorable, the re- 
covery of barren places noble, the production of corn 
and oil, of fruit and flowers, of gum and spices, of 
herbs and trees, a saving act; the whole earth being 
regarded by the Saints as a waste to be redeemed by 
labor into the future heaven. 

These notes deserve a close attention from those 
who would comprehend the political growth of the 
Mormon Church. 



196 N^EW AMERICA. 

The new church is divinely ruled. — The notion of God 
being always present among his people, making known 
his wishes from day to day, through one selected and 
unfailing channel, though it may appear to reverential 
persons very profane, is one that must strike a ruler 
and a thinker, bent on governing men through their 
hopes and fears, as offering him a vast reserve of 
strength-. Upon a certain class of minds, it is known 
that the mere sense of distance serves to dim all light, 
to deaden all fear ; so that, with persons having such 
minds, the authority of right and truth is apt to grow 
faint, in exact proportion to the remoteness of their 
vouchers. For men of this feeble stamp, everything 
must be new and near. To them old edicts are of 
doubtful force ; to them ancient traditions are out of 
date. Indeed, for every one save the highly trained, 
to whom Euclid is the same as De Morgan, laws have 
a tendency to become obsolete. A church that takes 
a particular year as its point of departure, and stands 
to it forever, must always reckon on coming into con- 
flict with this weakness of the human heart. To say 
that a thing is a long way off, that it happened a long 
time ago, is to express a kind of moral despair. Men 
wish to get nearer to the sources ; if the grace could 
be given to them, they would like to see God face to 
face. Moses cannot speak for them ; Sinai is but a 
name. They never felt the waves of Galilet3 stilled 
beneath them. They were not standing in the Gentile 
court when the Temple vail Avas rent in twain. 

To men of this class, clamorous for a sign, Jerusa- 
lem answered by a succession of prophets, who brought 
the Jewish heaven down to earth, and served it to the 
people with their daily bread ; Rome answers now, as 
she answered of old, with her mystery of the actual 
Presence of God in the bread and wine. Rome and 



HIGH POLITICS. 197 

Jerusalem found in such means a defence against 
feeble spirits; but cities of a wider culture — London, 
Boston, Amsterdam, Geneva — have no resources 
against such craving of the spirit, excepting the criti- 
cal opinions of their learned men. But this critical 
learning does not always answer. A faith which has 
to find its support in logic and in history, will always 
appear to some devout and unreasoning minds as a 
secular sort of canon, resting on man when it should 
only lean on God. Religious doubt is more exacting, 
and more illogical, than philosophical doubt. Per- 
haps the peril arising from its presence in any society 
is greatest in the freest and most educated states; reli- 
gious doubt being one of the products of civilization 
quicker in its physical than in its moral growth. As 
the mind may be clouded with excess of light, it may 
also become morbid from excess of health. Freedom 
starts inquiries to which replies are not yet ready, and 
the philosopher's di&culty makes the impostor's 
opportunity. When men ask for a sign and receive a 
date, what marvel if they should turn away ? Souls 
which are groping in the dark do not ask you for 
controversy, for history, for logic ; they want a living 
gospel, an instant revelation, a personal God. 

Here the Saint steps in to supply all wants. When 
Young, with a peculiar emphasis, says, "This I know," 
his followers take his voice for that of God. Their 
eyes dilate, their faces brighten, at his word ; new 
hope, fresh courage, shoot into their hearts. Accept- 
ing the counsel, the encouragement, as divine, life 
begins for them, as it wei-e, anew. It would be simple 
blindness in our pastors not to see that in our own age, 
and in the most liberal nations, many Aveak souls, from 
lack of true imaginative insight, are falling from a 
faith which they cannot any longer grasp as they 
17* 



198 NEW AMERICA. 

might an actual fact; on one side turning into Ration- 
alism, on the other side into Romanism — here be- 
coming Spiritualists, there inquiring about the Mor- 
mons. To the frail who are crying out for guidance, 
the Reasoners say, Come to us and be cured of creeds; 
the Saints say, Come to God and be saved from hell. 

The service of Grod is the enjoyment of life. — On its 
social side, the Mormon church may be regarded as 
gay, its ritual as festive. All that the elder creeds 
have nursed in the way of gloom, austerity, bewilder- 
ment, despair, is banished from the New Jerusalem. 
No one fears being damned ; no one troubles his soul 
about fate, free-will, election, and prevenient grace. 
A Mormon lives in an atmosphere of trust ; for in his 
eyes, heaven lies around him in his glowing lake, in his 
smiling fields, in his snowy alps. To him, the advent 
of the Saints was the Second Coming, and the found- 
ing of their church a beginning of the reign of God. 
He feels no dread, he takes no trouble, on account of 
the future. What is, will be ; to-morrow like to-day, 
the next year like the past one ; heaven a continuation 
of the earth; where to each man will be meted out 
glory and power according to the fulness of his obedi- 
ence in the present life. The earth, he says, is a 
Paradise made for enjoyment. If it were possible to 
think that Young and Pratt had ever read the Hindoo 
sages, we should imagine that they had borrowed this 
part of their system from the disciples of Vallabracha, 
the prophet of pleasure, the expounder of delight. 

From whatever source this idea of a festal service 
may have come, Euphrosyne reigns in Utah. Young 
might be described as Minister of Mirth ; having built 
a great theatre, in which his daughters play comedies 
and interludes ; having built a social hall, in which the 
young of both sexes dance and sing; and having set 



HIGH POLITICS. 199 

the example of balls and music-parties both in the 
open air and under private roofs. Concerts and operas 
are constantly being given. Water-parties, picnics, 
all the contrivances for innocent amusement, have his 
hearty sanction. Care is bestowed on the ripening of 
grapes, on the culture of peaches, on the cooking of 
food ; so that an epicure may chance to find in the 
New Jerusalem dainties which he would sigh for in 
vain at Washington and New York, When dining in 
the houses of apostles, we are always struck with the 
abundance of sweets and fruits, with the choiceness 
of their quality, and the daintiness of their prepara- 
tion. A stranger who sees the Theatre crowded and 
the Temple unbuilt, might run away with the notion 
that Young is less of a Saint than his people pretend 
to think. It would be a mistake ; such as we make 
in Bombay, when we infer that the Maharajahs have 
no religion, because in some of their services they clothe 
themselves in purple and begin with a feast. 

The new church regards work as noble. — That work is 
noble is a very old phrase, known to the Jews, held 
by the Essenes, sanctioned by St. Paul. It was a 
legend among monks in the middle ages ; and it lies 
at the root of all English, French, and American 
systems for reforming and* regenerating society. But 
the principle that manual labor is good in itself, and 
for its own sake, a blessing from heaven, a solace to 
the heart, a privilege, an endowment to the spirit, a 
service, an act of obedience, has never been taken as 
her fundamental social truth by any church. Hand- 
work may have been called useful ; it has nowhere 
been treated by the law as noble. In our old world, 
the names of prince and gentleman are given to those 
who write and think, not to those who plough and 
trench, who throw in the seed and gather up the 



200 NEW AMERICA. 

sheaves. By noble labor, we mean the work of 
judges, statesmen, orators, priests ; no one in Europe 
would think of saying that to plant a tree, to dig 
a drain, to build a house, to mow a field, would be 
noble toil. The Hindoo puts his laborers into the two 
lowest castes; if they are husbandmen, into the third 
caste ; if artisans, into the fourth ; their estate being in 
either ease far less honorable than that of a warrior, 
that of a priest. A Sudra's soul and body counts for 
less than one hair from a Brahman's head ; for among 
the Hindoos, work is regarded as a curse, never as a 
blessing, and the free laborer of Bengal ranks but one 
degree higher than a pariah and a slave. ]^ow and 
then the Hebrews had glimpses of a better law: — 
" Seest thou a man skilful in his work, he shall stand 
before kings ;" the theory of God and Nature ; and 
from this Hebrew source, not from any dreams of 
Owen, Fourier, and St. Simon, the Saints have bor- 
rowed their idea, translating it, not into language 
only, but into extensive pastures and smiling farms. 
With them, to do any piece of work is a righteous 
act ; to be a toiling and producing man is to be in a 
state of grace. 

What need is there to dwell on the political value 
of such a note ? 



MARRIAGE IN UTAH. 201 

t 
CHAPTER XXVn. 

MARRIAGE IN UTAH. 

But the most singular, the most powerful, of these 
three groups of secular notes, even when we stucl}^ 
them from a political point of view only, is that which 
defines the conditions of family life, particularly in 
what it has to say of marriage. Marriage lies at the 
root of society, and the method of dealing with it 
marks the spirit of every religious system. 

Now the New American church puts marriage into 
the very front of man's duties on earth. Neither man 
nor woman, says Young, can work out the will of 
God alone ; that is to say, all human beings have a 
function to discharge on earth — the function of pro- 
viding tabernacles of the flesh for immortal spirits 
now waiting to be born — which cannot be discharged 
except through that union of the sexes implied in 
marriage. To evade that function is, according to 
Young, to evade the most sacred of man's obligations. 
It is to commit sin. An unwedded man is, in Mormon 
belief, an imperfect creature ; like a bird without 
wings, a body without soul. Nature is dual ; to com- 
plete his organization, a man must marry a wife. 
Love, says Young, is the yearning for a higher state 
of existence ; and the passions, properly understood, 
are the feeders of our spiritual life. 

Looking to this dogma of the duty of wedlock 
solely as a source of political power, we should have 
to allow it very great weight. What waste it saves ! 
In many religious bodies marriage is simply tolerated, 



202 NEW AMERICA. 

as the lesser form of two dark evils. Those Essenes 
from whom we derive so much, allowed it only to the 
weak, and on account of weakness ; they thought it 
better for a good man to refrain from marriage ; and 
in the higher grades of their society the relation of 
wife and husband was unknown. Many orders among 
the Hindoos practise celibacy. The Greeks had their 
Vestal virgins, tlie Egyptians their anchorites, the 
Syrians their ascetics. In the Pagan Olympus, absti- 
nence was a virtue, praised, if not practised, by the 
gods. Hestia and Artemis were honored above all the 
denizens of heaven, because they rose beyond the 
reach of love ; nay, the idea of marriage being a kind 
of corruption had so far sunk into the Pagan mind as 
to crop out everywhere in the common speech. To be 
unloved was to be unspotted ; to be single was to be 
pure. In all Pagan poetry the title of virgin is held 
to be higher than that of mother, nobler than that of 
wife. Among Christian communities marriage is a 
theme of endless disputation ; one church calling it a 
sacrament, another calling it a contract; all churches 
considering it optional ; few regarding it as meri- 
torious ; many denouncing it as a compromise with 
the devil. The Greek church encourages celibacy in 
a class ; the Latin prohibits marriage to its priests. 
The Gothic church may be said to stand neutral ; but 
no church in the world has ever yet come to insist on 
the duty of marriage as necessary to the living of a 
true Christian life. 

On the contrary, every religious body which has 
dealt with the topic at all — Greek, Armenian, Coptic, 
Latin, Abyssinian — declares by facts, no less than by 
words, that any union of the sexes in the bands of 
wedlock is hostile to iho, highest conception of a 
Christian life. Hence the monastic houses ; hence the 



MARRIAGE IN UTAH. 203 

celibacy of priests ; institutions which infect the mind 
of society, arresting the growth of many household 
virtues, poisoning some of the sources of domestic 
life. A wifeless priest is a standing protest against 
wedded love ; for if it be true that the human affec- 
tions are a snare, leading men away from God, it is 
surely a good man's- duty to crush them out. A snare 
is a snare, a sin a sin, to be avoided equally'by the 
layman and the priest. 

Young has turned the face of his church another 
way. With him marriage is a duty and a privilege ; 
and the elders, being considered examples to the peo- 
ple in all good works, are enjoined to marry. A 
priest and elder must be a husband ; even among the 
humbler flock, it is held to be a disgrace, the sign of 
an unregenerated heart, for a young man to be found 
leading a single life. 

But the Saints have pushed the doctrine a step far- 
ther; for instead of denying to their popes and priests 
the consolation of woman's love, they encourage them 
to indulge in a plurality of wives ; and among their 
higher clergy, — the Prophet, the apostles, and the 
bishops, — this indulgence is next to universal. Not 
to be a pluralist is not to be a good Mormon. My 
friend, Captain Hooper, though he is known to be 
rich, zealous, insinuating, — an admirable representa- 
tive of Utah in Congress, — has never been able to rise 
high in the church, on account of his repugnance to 
taking another wife. "We look on Hooper," the 
Apostle Taylor said to me yesterday at dinner, "as 
only half a Mormon ;" at which every one laughed in 
a sly, peculiar way. When the merriment, in which 
the young ladies joined, had died down, I said to 
Hooper, " Here 's a great chance for you next season. 
Pick out six of the prettiest girls in Salt Lake City ; 



204 N-EW AMEBIC A. 

marry them in a batch ; carry them to Washington ; 
and open your season in December with a ball!" 
"Well," said Hooper, " I think that would take for a 
time ; but then I am growing to be an old fellow." 

Young, who is fond of Hooper, proud of his talents, 
and conscious of his services, is said to be urging him 
strongly to marry one more wife at least, so as to cast 
in his lot finally, whether for good or evil, with the 
polygamous church. If Hooper yields, it will be from 
a sentiment of duty and fidelity towards his chief. 

Every priest of the higher grades in Salt Lake Val- 
ley has a plural household ; the number of his mates 
varying with the wealth and character of the elder. 
'No apostle has less than three wives. 

Of the marriages of Brigham Young, Heber Kim- 
ball, and Daniel Wells, the three members of what is 
here called the First Presidency, no accounts are kept 
in the public otRce. It is the fashion of every pious 
old lady in this community, who may have lost her 
husband by death, to implore the bishop of her ward 
to take measures for getting her sealed to one of 
these three Presidents. Young is, of course, the 
favorite of such widows ; and it is said that he never 
makes a journey from the Beehive without being 
called upon to indulge one of these poor creatures in 
her wish. Hence, a great many women hold the 
nominal rank of his wife whom he has scarcely ever 
seen, and with whom he has never held the relations 
of a husband, as we in Europe should understand the 
term. The actual wives of Brigham Young, the 
women who live in his houses — in the Beehive, in 
the Lion House, in the White Cottage — who are the 
mothers of his children, are twelve, or about twelve, 
in number. The queen of all is the first wife, Mary 
Ann Angell, an aged lady, whose five children — 



MARRIAGE IN UTAH. 205 

three sons, two daughters — are now grown up. She 
lives in the AVhite Cottage, the first house ever built 
in Salt Lake Valley. Joseph and Brigham, her eldest 
sons, chiefs of their race, are already renowned in 
missionary labors. Sister Alice, her eldest daughter, 
is my friend — on the stage. The most famous, per- 
haps, of these ladies is Eliza Snow, the poetess, a lady 
universally respected for her fine character, univer- 
sally applauded for her fine talents. About fifty 
years old, with silver hair, dark eyes, and noble as- 
pect — simple in attire, calm, lady-like, rather cold — 
Eliza is the exact reverse to any imaginary light of 
the harem. I am led to believe that she is not a wife 
to Young in the sense of our canon ; she is always 
called Miss Eliza; in fact, the Mormon rite of sealing 
a woman to a man implies other relations than our 
Gentile rite of marriage; and it is only by a wide per- 
version of terms that the female Saints who may be 
sealed to a man are called his wives. Sister Eliza 
lives in the Lion House, in a pretty room, on the sec- 
ond fioor, overlooking the Oquirrh mountains, the 
Valley, the River Jordan, and the Salt Lake ; a poet's 
prospect, in which form and color, sky and land and 
w^ater, melt and fuse into a glory without end. Young's 
less distinguished partners are: Sister Lucy, by whom 
he has eight children ; Sister Clara, by whom he has 
three children ; Sister Zina, a poetess and teacher 
(formerly the wife of Dr. Jacobs), by whom he has 
three children ; Sister Amelia, an old servant of Jo- 
seph, by whom he has four children ; Sister Eliza (2), 
an English girl (the only Englishwoman in the Pro- 
phet's house), by whom he is said to have four or five 
children ; Sister Margaret, by whom he has three or 
four children ; Sister Emeline, often called the favor- 
ite, by whom he has eight children. Young himself 
18 



206 ^^^ AMEBIC A. 

tells me, that he has never had, and never vt^ill have, 
a favorite in his house ; since desires and preferences 
of the flesh have no part in the family arrangements 
of the Saints. 

The Apostles have fewer blessings than the Presi- 
dents ; but the Twelve are all pluralists. The follow- 
ing figures are supplied to me by George A. Smith, 
cousin of the Prophet Joseph, and Historian of the 
Church, — 

Orson Hyde, first apostle, has four wives ; 

Orson Pratt, second apostle, has four wives ; 

John Taylor, third apostle, has seven wives ; 

Wilford Woodruft', fourth apostle, has three wives; 

George A. Smith, fifth apostle, has five wives ; 

Amasa Lyman, sixth apostle, has five wives ; 

Ezra Benson, seventh apostle, has four wives ; 

Charles Rich, eighth apostle, has seven wives ; 

Lorenzo Snow, ninth apostle, has four wives ; 

Erastus Snow, tenth apostle, has three wives ; 

Franklin Richards, eleventh apostle, has four wives ; 

George Q. Cannon, twelfth apostle, has three wives. 

With the exception of John Taylor, the apostles are 
considered poor men ; and in Salt Lake it is held dis- 
honest for a man to take a new wife unless he can 
maintain his family in comfort, as regards lodging, 
food, and clothes. Some of the rich merchants are 
encouraged by Young to add wife on wife. A bold 
and pushing elder said to me last night, in answer to 
some banter, "I shall certainly marry again soon; the 
fact, is, I mean to rise in this church ; and you have 
seen enough to know that no man has a chance in our 
society unless he has a big household. To have any 
weight here, you must be known as the husband of 
three women." 



POLYGAMOUS SOCIETY. 207 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

POLYGAMOUS SOCIETY. 

On the political strengtli which this fashion of plu- 
rality lends to the Saints of Salt Lake City, a few- 
words may be said. Two questions present them- 
selves, — In the first place, has the promise of a plu- 
rality of wives proved to he a good bribe, inducing 
men of a certain class to join the Mormon Church? 
And, in the second place, has the practice of plurality 
shown itself to be a means by which, when converts 
have been won, they can be made to multiply in num- 
bers far beyond the ordinary rate ? 

To the first query, only one answer can be truly 
given. Name the motive as you please ; call it, with 
the Saints, desire of the spirit ; call it, with the Gen- 
tiles, desire of the flesh ; the fact will remain — that 
a license for making love to many women, for sealing 
them as wives, for gathering them into secluded ha- 
rems, has acted in the past, and is acting in the present, 
as a powerful and seductive bribe. 

Young and Pratt declare that the carnal appetites 
have no immediate share in their own selection of 
brides ; that this business of selection is the work of 
Heaven ; that the act of sealing is a religious rite ; 
and that a wife for eternity, the queen and partner of 
a celestial throne, can be given to a man by none but 
God. Young told me, with a laughing eye, that they 
would put their wives in evidence of what they say ; 
many of these ladies being old, plain, uneducated, ill- 
mannered ; though others, as my eyes inform me, are 
young, fresh, delicate, and charming. But, who can 



208 NUW A3IERIGA. 

doubt that Young, with his keen sense of power, and 
his mastery of all the springs of action, is well aware 
of the political uses to be made of this great appeal 
of beauty to the carnal man ? If taking a fresh wife 
once a year be an act of obedience, it serves the Saints 
very much like a call of pleasure. Yet, who shall 
say they are insincere? Young told me that in the 
early days of their strange institution, he was much 
opposed to plural households, and I am confident that 
he speaks the truth. Among the Mormon presidents 
and apostles, we have not seen one face on which liar 
and hypocrite were written. Though we daily meet 
with fanatics, we have not seen a single man whom 
w^e can call a rogue. Their faith is not our faith — their 
practice is not our practice. YvHiat then ? Among 
the Plindoos many sects indulge in rites which English 
people call licentious ; some, indeed, being so abomi- 
nable, that a man who sees them for the first time is 
apt to call for the police. Could the Ras Mandala be 
performed in London ? Would the Kanchulayas be 
allowed to celebrate their w^orship in ISTew York ? Yet 
there are men and women, living under the sceptre 
of Victoria, who in perfect faith, if not in perfect 
innocency, imitate the amorous sports of Krishna, 
choosing the partners of their delirious worship by 
the lottery of the vest. 

Young may believe in what he says, and in what he 
does (for I think him, in the sphere of his knowledge 
and his customs, an honest man) ; but some of his 
followers are accused of taking pains to preach a plu- 
rality of wives, as one of the rewards of conversion to 
his church; and I know that they are fond of quoting 
the promise made by Nathan to David, that he should 
wed and enjoy the wives of his enemy Saul. That 
this gospel of indulgence is found by the Saiiits to be 



POLYGAMOUS SOCIETY. 209 

most alluring in Gentile lands, their missionaries 
would certainly not deny. It iw&y be that either the 
flesh is weak or the spirit strong; but the Welsh 
peasant, the London tailor, the Lancashire weaver, is 
found to pore with a rapt eye and a burning pulse 
over the pictures painted by missionaries of that Para- 
dise near Salt Lake, in which a man is free to do all 
things that his arm can compass, to have as many 
houses as he can build, as many wives as he can feed 
and govern. An un regenerate man is told that a 
harem may be not only lawfully kept, but easily 
gained, — the female heart being opened by a special 
providence to the truth as it lies in Young, — that 
there are plenty of beautiful girls at Salt Lake ; and 
that a Saint is invited and enjoined to live up to the 
perfect law. Few elders, it is said, come back to Utah 
from a journey without bringing a new favorite, won 
from among the Gentiles to his fold. One of Young's 
wives was a married lady in New York, who fell in 
love with the Prophet and fled with him from her 
husband's house. It is one of the pleasantries of 
Utah, that Kimball never lets a missionary go forth 
on a journey without giving him injunctions to bring 
back young lambs. It is noted, as a rule, that the 
high dignitaries of the church have been blessed by 
heaven with the prettiest women ; one of those recom- 
penses of a virtuous life which Helvetius conceived as 
desirable, but which no society has ever yet had the 
wit and daring to adopt. 

To the second query two answers may be returned. 
In a flxed society, like that of Turkey, of Syria, of 
Egypt, the existence of polygamy would have no great 
influence on the powers of increase. Once, indeed, 
men thought otherwise. Writers, like Montesquieu, 
seeing that polygamy prevailed in many parts of the 
18* 



210 NEW AMERICA. 

East, imagined that in these regions the females must 
be far in excess of the males, and that the appropria- 
tion of several women to one man was a rule of na- 
ture, made from the earliest times, by way of correct- 
ing a freak of birth. Travellers, like Mebuhr, finding 
his Arab sheikhs with harems, hinted that polygamy 
arose from the circumstance that Arab women groAv 
old and barren while their husbands are still young 
and hale. These delusions have long since gone the 
way of all error. 

ISTow, we can happily say, in the light of science, 
that even in Egypt and Arabia the males and females 
are born in about equal numbers ; the males being a 
little in excess of the females. We see, then, that 
Nature has put the human family on the earth in 
pairs; rejecting by her own large mandate all those 
monstrous and irregular growths apart from the con- 
jugal relations established by herself between male 
and female ; whether those growths have taken the 
shape either of polygamy or of polyandry, either many 
wives to one husband, or many husbands to one wife. 
The true law of nature, therefore, is, that one male 
and one female shall make their home together ; and 
in the old country, where the sexes are ^qual, where 
the manners are uniform, and where the religion is 
common, any departure from this true law will rather 
weaken than increase the multiplying power of the 
country as a whole. So far the answer seems to go 
one way. The question, however, is, not as to the 
growth of a whole nation ; but as to that of a par- 
ticular family, of a particular community, of a mere 
sect within the boundaries of that nation. Even in 
Arabia, it is clear that if a particular slieikh could 
invent some means of getting from other tribes a 
o-reat many of their women, until he had enough fe- 



POLYGAMOUS HO CLE TV. 211 

males in his power to give three wives to every male 
adult in his camp, the tribe of that sheikh would in- 
crease in numbers faster than their neighbors who had 
only one wife apiece. This is something like the case 
in America with the Saints. Their own society could 
not give them the plurality of wives which they an- 
nounce as the social law of all coming time. But 
granted that, by either good or evil means, they could 
get the women into their church, it is idle to deny 
that the possession of such a treasure gives them 
enormous powers of increase. One man may be the 
father of a hundred children ; one woman can hardly 
be the mother of a score. We know that Jair and 
Hillel must have been polygamists, the moment we 
hear that the first had thirty sons and the second had 
forty sons. 

It is not an easy thing to count the number of chil- 
dren in the different households at Salt Lake. The 
census papers cannot be quoted, since they were made 
up, the Apostle Taylor tells me, mainly by guessing 
on the part of a Gentile officer, who would not go 
about and count. In this city a moslem jealousy ap- 
pears to guard such facts as would be public property 
in London and New York. Young tells us he has 
forty-eight children now alive. Kimball has, perhaps, 
an equal number. Every house seems full; wherever 
we see a woman, she is nursing ; and in every house 
we enter two or three infants in arms are shown to us. 
This valley is, indeed, the true baby land. For a man 
to have twenty boys and girls in his house is a com- 
mon fact. A merchant with whom we were dining 
yesterday, could not tell us the number of his children 
until he had consulted a book then lying on his desk. 
One of his wives, a nice English lady, with the usual 
baby at her breast, smiled sweet reproof on his igno- 



212 NEW A3IE RICA. 

ranee ; but the fact was so ; and it was only after count- 
ing and consulting that he could give us the exact re- 
turn of his descendants. This patriarch is thirty-three 
years old. 

It was by means of polygamy that Israel increased 
in a few generations so as to confound all sense of 
numbers ; and no one can mistake the tendency among 
these American Saints. Young has more children than 
Jair ; Pratt than Hill el ; Kimball than Ibzan. This rate 
of growth may not be kept up for a hundred years ; in 
time it must slacken of itself for want of supplies ; 
but for the present moment it exists: — not the least 
ominous of those facts which a statesman of the ]^ew 
America has to face. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE DOCTRINE OF PLURALITIES. 

"When the Saints were engaged in seizing, as they 
say, for their own use, all that was found to be fair and 
fruitful in other creeds, they would appear to have 
added to the relations of husband and wife, as these 
have been fixed by the codes of all civilized States, 
whether Christian, Moslem, Jewish, or Hindoo, some 
highly dramatic details. Not only have the Saints 
adopted polygamy into their church, but they have 
borrowed it under its oldest and most savage form. 

Taken by itself, apart from surrounding schools of 
thought, the mere fact of a new church having brought 
itself to allow plurality of wives among its members, 
would not need to startle us very much, since many 



THE DOCTRINE OF PLURALITIES. 213 

of us are familiar with such a system in legend and in 
history, even though we may be strangers to it by 
actual sight and sound. Abraham and David practised 
it. IS^either Moses nor Paul forbade it ; and Moham- 
med, while purifying it of the grosser Oriental features, 
sanctioned it by his deeds. Polygamy enters into the 
poetry of Cordova, the romance of Bagdad. The enter- 
prising Parsee, the learned Brahman, the fiery Rajpoot, 
all embrace it. Even in the Christian Church, opinions 
are divided as to whether it is wrong in itself, or only 
a trouble in the social body. Many of the early eon- 
verts, both in Syria and in Egypt, were polygamists ; 
and the questions which have recently disturbed Co- 
lenso and the Kaffir chief had arisen in primitive times, 
wdien the policy of admitting men having several wives 
into fellowship was affirmed by fathers of the church. 
Nor would the appearance of polygamy in these plains 
of Salt Lake be a novel and surprising fact, since every- 
thing that we know of Ute and Shoshone compels us 
to believe that plurality has always been the domestic 
law of these valleys. The sides of these sierras are 
wild and bare ; a poor country and a hard life induce 
polygamy ; and all the tribes of red men which seek 
a scanty subsistence in these glens and plains practise 
the nomadic custom of stealing and selling squaws. A 
big chief prides himself on having plenty of wives ; 
and the white men, who have come to live among 
these Utes, Cheyennes, Arappahoes, and Kiowas, 
whether they began as trappers, guides', interpreters, 
or hunters, have almost always fallen into the Indian 
wa}^ of living. The dozen pale-faces, known to be 
dwelling with Indian tribes at this moment — hunting 
buffiilo, cutting scalps — are all polygamists; often 
with larger harems than the biggest native chiefs. 
But the Saints have not simply revived polygamy 



214 NEW AMERICA. 

in Utah ; they have returned to that form of domestic 
life in both its unlimited and its incestuous forms. In 
their search for the foundations of a new society, they 
have gone back to the times when Abram was called 
out of Hauran ; undoing the work of all subsequent 
reformers ; setting aside not only all that Mohammed, 
but all that Moses had done for the better regulation 
of our family life. Moses forbade a man to take a wife 
of his own flesh and blood, Mohammed restrained 
his followers to a harem of three or four wives ; a 
moderation at which Young and Kimball, who appeal 
from Moses to Abraham, only laugh. "Who, they ask, 
married his half-sister Sarai ? — the man of Grod. 
Hence the Saints of Utah have set up a claim to marry 
their own half-sisters, without being able to plead for 
this practice either the Arab custom or the Arab need. 
They find no objection, either in nature or in revela- 
tion, to the custom of breeding in and in ; a subject 
on which we one day had a curious talk with Young 
and the Twelve. Young denied that degeneracy springs 
from marriage between men and women who may be 
near in blood. 

The Saints go much beyond Abram; and I, for one, 
am inclined to think that they have found their type 
of domestic life in the Indian's wigwam rather than in 
the Patriarch's tent. Like the Ute, a Mormon may 
'have as many wives as he can feed ; like the Mandan, 
he may marry three or four sisters, an aunt and her 
niece, a mother and her child. Perhaps it would not 
be too much to say that in the Mormon code there is 
no such crime as incest, and that a man is practically 
free to woo and wed any Avoman who may take his eye. 

We have had a very strange conversation with Young 
about the Mormon doctrine of incest. I asked hini 
whether it was a common thing among the Saints to 



THE DOCTRINE OF PLURALITIES. 215 

marry mother and daughter ; and, if so, on what au- 
thority they acted, since that kind of union was not 
sanctioned either by the command to Moses or by the 
"revelation" to Smith. When he hung back from 
admitting that such a thing occurred at all, I named 
a case in one of the city wards, of which we had ob- 
tained some private knowledge. Apostle Cannon said 
that in such cases the first marriage would be only a 
form ; that the elder female would be understood as 
being a mother to her husband and his younger bride ; 
on which I named my example: and in which an elder 
of the church had married an English woman, a widow, 
with a daughter then of twelve; in which the woman 
had borne four children to this husband ; and in which 
this husband had married her daughter when she came 
of age. 

Young said it was not a common thing at Salt Lake. 

"But it does occur? " 

"Yes," said Young, "it occurs sometimes? " 

" On what ground is such a practice justified by the 
church ? " 

After a short pause, he said, with a faint and wheed- 
ling smile : " This is a part of the question of incest. 
We have no sure light on it yet. I cannot tell you 
what the church holds to be the actual truth ; I can 
tell you my own opinion ; but you must not publish 
it — you must not tell it — lest I should be misunder- 
stood and blamed." He then made to us a commu- 
nication on the nature of incest, as he thinks of this 
offence and judges it ; but what he then said I am not 
at liberty to print. 

As to the facts which came under my own eyes, I 
am free to speak. Incest, in the sense in which we 
use the word, — marriage within the prohibited de- 
grees, — is not regarded as a crime in the Mormon 



216 NEW AMEBIC A. 

church. It is known that in some of these saintly 
harems, the female occupants stand to their lords in 
closer relationship of blood than the American law 
permits. It is a daily event in Salt Lake City for a 
man to wed two sisters, a brother's widow, and even 
a mother and daughter. A saint named Wall has 
married his half-sister, pleading the example of Sarai 
and Abraham, which Young, after some consideration, 
allowed to be a precedent for his flock. In one house- 
hold in Utah may be seen the spectacle of three women, 
who stand towards each other in the relation of child, 
mother, and grand-dame, living in one man's harem as 
his wives ! I asked the President, whether, with his 
new lights on the virtue of breeding in and in, he saw 
any objection to the marriage of brother and sister. 
Speaking for himself, not for the church, he said he 
saw none at all. What follows I give in the actual 
words of the speakers : — 

D. " Does that sort of marriage ever take place ? " 

Young. " Never," 

D. " Is it prohibited by the church ? " 

Young. " No ; it is prohibited by prejudice." 

Kimball. " Public opinion won't allow it." 

Young. " I would not do it myself, nor suflt'er any 
one else, when I could help it." 

Z>. " Then you don't prohibit, and you don't practise 
it?" 

Young. "My prejudices prevent me." 

This remnant of an old feeling brought from the 
Gentile world, and this alone, would seem to prevent 
the Saints from rushing into the higher forms of incest. 
How long will these Gentile sentiments remain in 
force ? 

" You will find here," said Elder Stenhouse to me, 
talking on another subject, "polygamists of the third 



THE DOG TRINE OF PL UBALITIES. 217 

generation; when these boys and girls grow up, and 
marr}', you will have in these valleys the true feeling 
of patriarchal life. The old world is about us yet ; 
and we are always thinking of what people may say in 
the Scottish hills and the Midland shires." 

A revival of polygamy, which would have been sin- 
gular in either Persia or Afghanistan, sprang up slowly, 
and by a sort of secret growth. It began with Rigdon 
and his theory of the spiritual wife, which he is said 
to have borrowed from the Vermont Methodists. At 
first, this theory was no more than a mystical spec- 
ulation ; having reference, less to the world and its 
duties, than to heaven and its thrones. We know that 
it was preached by Rigdon, that it was denounced by 
Joseph, that it crept into favor with the ciders, that it 
gave rise to much scandal in the Church, and that it 
was finally superseded by a more practical and useful 
creed. 

The S2:)irit evoked by that fanatic in the infant church 
could not be laid ; sealing women went on ; the first 
in the new Prophet's household, afterwards in the 
harems pf Kimball, Pratt, and Hyde , whose mar- 
riages, only half secret, put an end to the mystical 
restraints involved in the theory of spiritual husbands 
and spiritual wives. They were polygamous, but po- 
lygamous without disguise. Years afterwards. Young 
produced a paper, which he said was a true copy of a 
revelation made to Joseph at Nauvoo, commanding 
him, after the manner of Abraham, of Jacob, and of 
David, to receive into his bosom as many wives as 
should be given unto him of God. This paper was 
not in Joseph's handwriting, nor in that of Emma, his 
wife. Young declares that it was written down from 
the Prophet's lips by a male disciple ; adding, with a 
true touch of nature, that when Emma had first heard 
19 



218 NEW A3IERICA. 

it read, she had seized the paper and flung it on the 
fire. 

Young tells me that he was himself opposed to the 
doctrine, and that he preached against it, foreseehig 
what trouhle it would bring upon the Church. He 
says that he shed many bitter tears over the sacred 
writing ; and that only on his being convinced by 
Joseph that the command to marry more wives was a 
true revelation, he submitted his prejudices and his 
passions to the will of God. He is very emphatic on 
this point. " Without this revelation on polygamy," 
he said to us, "we should have lived our religious life, 
but not so perfectly as we do now. God directed men, 
through Joseph, to take more wives. This is what 
we most firmly believe." As he sj^oke, he appealed 
to the apostles who were sitting round us, every one 
of whom bowed and acquiesced in these words. 

For years, the Saints admit that nothing had come 
of this revelation ; that was kept a secret from the 
world ; two things having to be seen before such a 
dogma could be openly proclaimed in the Church ; 
(first) how it would be received by the great- masses 
of the Saints at home and abroad ; and (second) how 
it would be regarded by the American courts of law. 
To ascertain how it would be welcomed by the Saints, 
sermons were preached and poetry Avas composed. 
Female missionaries called on the people to repent of 
their sins, and to return to the principles of patriarchal 
life. Every Sarai was encouraged to bring forth her 
Hagar. A religious glow ran through the Mormon 
Society, and the whole body of Saints declared for 
publishing the command from God to Joseph in favor 
of taking to his bosom a plurality of wives. 

Two thousand elders came together in the New 
Jerusalem, and after hearing a discourse from Orson 



THE DOCTRINE OF PLURALITIES. 219 

Pratt, and a speech from Brigham Youno;, they re- 
ceived and adopted the revelation, (August 29, 1852); 
a remarkable date in the history of their church, one 
of the saddest epochs in that of the Saxon race. 

Nearly all those elders were of English blood; a 
few only were Germans, Gauls, and Danes ; nineteen 
in every twenty, at least, were either English or 
American born. That day the red men and the white 
men made with each other an unwritten covenant, for 
the Shoshone had at length found a brother in the 
Pale-face, and the Pawnee saw the morals of his 
wigwam carried into the Saxon's ranch. 

But the new dogma from Heaven was announced 
by Young as a special and personal, rather than a 
common and indiscriminate, property of the Saints. 
The power to take many wives was given to them as 
a grace, not as a right. Plurality was permitted to a 
few, not enjoined upon the many. In the eyes of 
Young, it was regarded, not as a privilege of the 
earth, but as a gift of heaven ; a peculiar blessing 
from the Father to some of His most favored sons. 

The Prophet seems to have noted from the first, 
that in this passionate and robust society, full of young 
life and young ideas, his power of giving women 
to his elders and apostles would be of higher moment 
to him, as a governing force, than even his power 
of blessing the earth and unlocking the gates of 
heaven. Such an authority has made him the master 
of every house in Utah. N^o Pope, no Caliph, no 
Gosain, ever exercised this power of gratifying every 
heart that lusted after beauty ; but when it came into 
Young's hands, through the march of ideas and 
events, he held it in his grip, as a faculty inseparable 
from his person and his rank. A saint may wed one 
woman without seeking leave from his Prophet ; that 



220 NEW AMEBIC A. 

privilege may be considered one of his rights as 
a man ; but beyond this limit he can never go, except 
by permission of his spiritual chief. In every case of 
taking a second wife, a special warrant is required 
from heaven, which Young alone has the right to ask. 
If Young says yea, the marriage may take place ; if 
he says nay, there is no appeal from his spoken word. 
In the Mormon church polygamy is not a right of 
man, but a gift of God. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THE GREAT SCHISM. 

This dogma of a plurality of wives has not come 
into the church without fierce disputes and a violent 
schism. 

George A. Smith, cousin of Joseph, and Historian 
of the Mormon Church, tells me from the papers 
in his office, that about five hundred bishops and 
elders live in polygamy in the Salt Lake valleys; 
these five hundred elders having, as he believes, on 
the average, about four wives each, and probably 
fifteen children ; so that this very peculiar institution 
has come, in fourteen years, to aflect the lives and 
fortunes, more or less, of ten thousand persons. This 
number, large though it seems, is but a twentieth part 
of the following claimed by Young. Assuming, then, 
that these five hundred pluralists are all of the same 
opinion; — in the first place, as to the divine will 
having been truly manifested to Joseph ; in the 



THE GREAT SCHISM. 221 

second place, as to that manifestation having been 
faithfully recorded; and in the third place, as to that 
record having been loyally preserved, — there must 
still be room for a very large difference of opinion. 
The great body of male Saints must always be content 
with a single wife; Young himself admits so much. 
Only the rich, the steadfast, the complaisant, can be 
indulged in the luxury of a harem even now, when 
the thing is fresh and the number of female converts 
is large enough to supply the want. As nature itself 
is fighting against this dogma, the humble Saint cannot 
hope to enjoy in the future any of the advantages 
which he is now denied. Man}', even among the 
wealthy, hesitate, like Captain Hooper, to commit 
themselves forever to a doubtful rule of family order, 
and to a certain collision with the United States. 
Some protest in words, and some recede from the 
Church, without, however, renouncing the authority 
of Joseph Smith. 

The existence of a second Mormon Church — of a 
great schismatic body, is not denied by Young, who 
of course considers it the devil's work. Vast bodies 
of the Saints have left the Church on account of 
polygamy ; twenty thousand, I am told, have done so, 
in California alone. Mau}?^ of these non-pluralist 
Saints exist in Missouri and in Illinois. Even among 
those who fondly cling to their Church at Salt Lake 
City, it is apparent to me that nineteen in twenty have 
no interest, and not much faith, in polygamy. The 
belief that their founder Joseph never lived in this 
objectionable state is widely spread. 

Prophets, bishops, elders, all the great leaders of 

the faith, assert that for months before his death at 

Carthage, the founder of Mormonism had indulged 

himself though in secret, with a household of many 

19* 



222 NEW AMERICA. 

wives. Of course tliey do not call his sealing to him- 
self these women an indulgence ; they say he took to 
himself such females only as were given to him of 
God. But they claim him as a pluralist. Now, if 
this assertion could be proved, the trouble would be 
ended, since anything that Joseph practised would be 
held a virtue, a necessity, by his flock. On the other 
side, a pluralist clergy is bound to maintain the truth 
of this hypothesis. For if Joseph were not a polyga- 
mist, he could hardly, they would reason, have been a 
faithful Mormon and a saint of God; since it is the 
present belief of their body that a man with only one 
wife will become a bachelor angel, a mere messenger 
and servant to the patriarchal gods. So, without pro- 
ducing much evidence of the fact, the elders have 
stoutly asserted that Joseph had secretly taken to him- 
self a multitude of women, three or four of whom 
they point out to you, as still living at Salt Lake in 
the family of Brigham Young. 

Still, no proof has ever yet been adduced to show 
that Joseph either lived as a polygamist or dictated 
the revelation in favor of a plurality of wives. That 
he did not openly live with more than one woman is 
admitted by all — or by nearly all; and so far as his 
early and undoubted writings are concerned, nothing 
can be clearer than that his feelings were opposed to 
the doctrines and practices which have since his death 
become the high notes of his church. In the Book of 
Mormon he makes God* Himself say that He delights 
in the chastity of women, and that the harems of 
David and Solomon are abominations in His sight. 
Elder Godbe, to whom I pointed out this passage, 
informed me that the bishops explain away this view 
of polygamy, as being uttered by God at a time when 
He was angry with His people, on account of their 



THE GREAT SCHISM. 223 

sins, and as not expressing His permanent will on the 
subject of a holy life. 

The question of fact is open like the question of infer- 
ence. Joseph, it is well known, set his face against 
Rigdon's theory of the spiritual wife ; and it is equally 
well known that he neither published the revelations 
which bear his name, nor spoke of such a document as 
being in his hands. 

Emma, Joseph's wife and secretary, the partner of 
all his toils, of all his glories, coolly, firmly, perma- 
nently denies that her husband ever had any other 
wife than herself. She declares the story to be false, 
the revelation a fraud. She denounces polygamy as 
the invention of Young and Pratt — a work of the 
devil — brought in by them for the destruction of God's 
new church. On account of this doctrine, she has 
separated herself from the Saints of Utah, and has 
taken up her dwelling with what she calls a remnant 
of the true church at Nauvoo. 

The four sons of Joseph — Joseph, William, Alex- 
ander, David — all deny and denounce what they call 
Young's imposture of plurality. These sons of Joseph 
are now grown men ; and their personal interests are 
so clearly identified with the success of their father's 
church, to the members of which their fellowship 
would be precious, that nothing less than a personal 
conviction of the truth of what they say can be hon- 
estly considered as having turned them against Brig- 
ham Young. 

As it is, these sons of the original seer have formed 
a great schism in the church. Under the name of 
Josephites, a band of Mormons are now gathering 
round these sons of the prophet, strong enough to 
beard the lion in his den. Alexander Smith has been 
at Salt Lake while I have been here, and has been 



224 NEW AMERICA. 

suffered to preach asrainst polyo^amy in Independence 
Hall. 

Young appears to me very sore on account of these 
young men, whom he would gladly receive into his 
family, and adopt as his sons, if they would only let 
him. David he regards with a peculiar grace and 
favor. "Before that child was born," he said to me 
one da}^ when the conversation turned on these young 
men, "Joseph told me that he would be a son; that 
his name must be David ; that he would grow up to 
be the guide and ruler of this church." I asked 
Young whether he thought this prophecy would come 
to pass. "Yea," he answered; "in the Lord's own 
time, David will be called to this work." I asked him 
whether David was not just now considered to be out 
of the church. 

"He will be called and reconciled," said Young, 
"the moment he feels a desire to be led aright." 

This schism on account of polygamy — led, as it is, 
by the Prophet's widow and her sons — is a serious 
fact for the church, even in the judgment of those 
bishops and elders who in minor affairs would seem 
to take no heed for the morrow. Young is alive to it; 
for in reading the Chicago platform, he can see how 
easily the Gentile world might reconcile itself to the 
Prophet's sons in Nauvoo, while waging war upon 
himself and the supporters of polygamy in Utah. 

The chief — almost the sole — evidence that we have 
found in Salt Lake City in favor of Joseph having had 
several wives in the flesh is an assertion made by 
Young. 

I was pointing out to him the loss of moral force 
to which his people must be always subject while the 
testimony on that cardinal .point of practice is incom- 
plete. If Joseph were sealed to many women, there 



THE GREAT SCHISM. 225 

must be records, witnesses, of the fact; where are those 
records and those witnesses ? 

"I," said Young, vehemently, "am the witness. 
I myself sealed dozens of women to Joseph." 

I asked him whether Emma was aware of it. He 
said he guessed she was ; but he could not say. In 
answer to another question, he admitted that Joseph 
had no issue by any of these wives who were sealed to 
him in dozens. 

From two other sources we have obtained particles 
of evidence confirming Young's assertion. Two wit- 
nesses, living far apart, unknown to each other, have 
told us they were intimate with women who assert 
that they had been sealed to Joseph at Nauvoo. Young 
assures me that several old ladies, now living under 
his roof, are widows of Joseph; and that all the apos- 
tles know them, and reverence them as such. Three 
of these ladies I have seen in the Tabernacle. I have 
learned that some of these women have borne children 
to the second Prophet, though they bore none to the 
first. 

My own impression (after testing all the evidence to 
be gathered from friend and foe) is, that these old 
ladies, though they may have been sealed to Joseph 
for eternity, were not his wives in the sense in which 
Emma, like the rest of women, would use the word 
wife. I think they were his spiritual queens and com- 
panions, chosen after the method of the "Wesleyan 
Perfectionists; with a view, not to pleasures of the 
flesh, but to the glories of another world. Young 
may be technically right in the dispute ; but the Pro- 
phet's sons are, in my opinion, legally and morally in 
the right. It is my firm conviction, that if the practice 
of plurality should become a permanent conquest of 
this American church, the Saints will not owe it to 
Joseph Smith, but to Brigham Young. 



226 NEW AMERICA. 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

SEALING. 

Much confusion comes upon us from the use of this 
word sealing in the English sense of marriage. Seal- 
ing may mean marriage ; it may also mean something 
else. A woman can he sealed to a man without be- 
coming his wife, as we have found in the case of Jo- 
seph's supposed widows ; also in the instance of Eliza 
Snow, the poetess, who, in spite of being sealed to 
Young, is called Miss Snow, and regarded by her peo- 
ple as a spinster. Consummation, necessary in wed- 
lock, is not necessary in sealing. Marriage is secular; 
sealing is both secular and celestial. 

A strange peculiarity which the Saints have intruded 
into the finer relations of husband and wife is that of 
continuity. Their right of sealing man and woman 
to each other may be for either time or eternity; that 
is to say, the man may take the woman as his wife 
either for this world only, as we all do in the Christian 
church, or for this world during life and the next 
world after death. The lite has some inkling of the 
ideas on which these Saints proceed, since he dreams 
that in the hunting-grounds beyond the sunset he will 
be accompanied by his faithful dog and his favorite 
squaw. The Mosaic Arab, when the thought of a re- 
surrection dawned upon his mind, peopled his heaven 
with the men and women whom he had known on 
earth, and among the rights which he carried forward 
into the brighter land, was that of claiming the society 
of his mortal wife. The Moslem Arab, though he has 
learned from a later poetry to adorn his paradise with 



SEALING. 227 

angelic houris, still fancies that a faithful warrior who 
prays for such a blessing will be allowed to associate 
in heaven with the humble partner of his cares on 
earth. It is only in our higher, holier heaven that 
these human joys and troubles are unknown, that 
there is no giving and taking in marriage, that the 
spirits of the just become as the angels of God. 

Upon the actual relations of husband and wife, Ute 
and Arab theories of reunion after death in the old 
bonds of wedlock have no effect beyond that of excit- 
ing a good and loving woman to strive with a warmer 
zeal to satisfy the affections of her lord, so as to ensure 
her place by his side in the celestial wigwam, in a 
paradisiacal tent. But among the Saints of Salt Lake 
the notion of a marriage for time being a contract, not 
only different in duration, but also in nature, from the 
sealing for eternity, has led to very strange and wholly 
practical results. A Mormon elder preaches the doc- 
trine that a woman who has been sealed to one hus- 
band for time may be sealed to another for eternity. 
This sealing must be done on earth, and it may be done 
in the lifetime of her earlier lord. In some degree, 
it is a gift to the woman of a second choice ; for 
among these Saints the female enjoys nearly the same 
power of selecting her celestial bridegroom as the 
male enjoys of selecting his mortal bride. 

Of course, the questionfis always coming forward 
as to what rights over her person on earth this sealing 
of a woman's soul for eternity confers. May the 
celestial rite be performed without the knowledge and 
consent of the husband for time ? Can it be com- 
pleted without invasion of his conjugal claims? Is it 
clear that any man would suffer his wife to be sealed 
to another if he were told of the fact, since an engage- 
ment for eternity must be of more solemn nature and 



228 N^W AMERICA 

more binding force than the minor contract for time ? 
It is not probable that the intimacies of a man and 
woman who are linked to each other in the higher 
bond would be more close and secret than the intima- 
cies of earth. 

Some Saints deny that it is a com.mon thing in Utah 
for a woman to be sealed to one man for earth and 
another man for heaveii. It may not be common ; 
but it occurs in more than one family ; it gives occa- 
sion for some strife ; and the humbler Saint has less 
protection against abuse of such an order than he 
would like to enjoy. Young is here the lord of all. 
If the Prophet says to an elder, "Take her," the 
woman will be taken, whether for good or evil. Often, 
I am told, these second and superior nuptials are made 
in secret, in the recesses of the endowment-house, with 
the help of two or three confidential chiefs. No notice 
of them is given ; it is doubtful whether any record of 
them is kept. What man, then, with a pretty wife, 
can feel sure that her virtue will not be tempted by 
his elders into forming that strange, indefinite relation 
for another world with a husband of superior rank in 
the church ? The office of priest, of prophet, of seer, 
has in every country a peculiar charm for women ; 
what curates are in London, abbes in Paris, mollahs 
in Cairo, gosains in Benares, tViese elders and apostles 
are in Utah ; with the add^l grace of a personal power 
to advance their female votaries to the highest of 
celestial thrones. Except the guru of Bombay, no 
priest on earth has so large a power of acting on every 
weakness of the female heart as a Mormon bishop at 
Salt Lake. Who shall assure the humbler Saint that 
priests possessing so much power in heaven and on 
earth will never, in these secret sealings for eternity, 
violate his right, outrage his honor, as a married man ? 



SEALING. 229 

Another familiarity, not less strange, which the 
Mormons have introduced into these delicate relations 
of husband and wife, is that of sealing a living person 
to the dead. 

The marriage for time is an affair of earth, and must 
be contracted between a living man and a living 
woman ; but the marriage for eternity, being an affair 
of heaven, may be contracted, say these Saints, with 
either the living or the dead ; provided always that it 
be a real engagement of the persons, sanctioned by 
the Prophet, and solemnized in the proper form. In 
any case it must be a genuine union ; a true marriage, 
in the canonical sense, and according to the written 
law ; not a Platonic rite, an attachment of souls, which 
would bind the two parties together in a mystical bond 
only. There comes the rub. How can a woman be 
united in this carnal conjunction to a man in his grave? 
By the machinery of substitution, say the Saints. 

Substitution ! Can there be such a thing in marriage 
as either one man, or one woman, standing in the 
place of another? Young has declared it. The 
Hebrews had a glimmering sense of some such dogma, 
when they bade the younger brother perform a 
brother's part ; and are not all the Saints one family 
in the sight of God ? Among the Hebrews, this rule 
of taking a brother's widow to wife was an exception 
to general laws ; and in the Arab legislation of 
Mohammed, it was put away as a remnant of polyandry, 
a thing abominable and unclean. Ko settled people 
has ever gone back to that rule of a pastoral tribe. 
But Young, who has no fear of science, deals in auda- 
cious originality with this and with every other ques- 
tion of female right, A woman may choose her own 
bridegroom of the skies, but, like the man who would 
take a second wife, the woman who desires to marry 



230 N'EW AMEBIC A. 

a dead husband, can do it in no other way than on 
Young's intercession and by his consent. Say, that a 
girl of erratic fancy takes into her head the notion 
that she would like to become one of the heavenly 
queens of a departed saint; nothing easier, should her 
freak of imagination jump with the Prophet's humor. 
Young is her only judge, his yea or nay her measure 
of right and wrong. By a religious act, he can seal 
her to the dead man, whom she has chosen to be her 
own lord and king in heaven ; by the same act he can 
give her a substitute on earth from among his elders 
and apostles ; should her beauty tempt his eye, he may 
accept for himself the office of proxy for her departed 
saint. 

In the Tabernacle I have been shown two ladies who 
are sealed to Young by proxy as the wives of Joseph; 
the Prophet himself tells me there are many more ; 
and of these two I can testify that their relations to 
him are the same as those of any other mortal wives. 
They are the mothers of children who bear his name. 
Two of the young ladies whom we saw on the stage, 
Sister Zina and Sister Emily, are daughters of women 
who profess to be Joseph's widows. About the story 
of all these ladies there is an atmosphere of doubt, of 
mystery, which we can hardly pierce. Two of them 
live under Brigham's roof; a third lives in a cottage 
before his gate ; a fourth is said to live with her daugh- 
ter at Cotton Wood Canyon. 

My own impression is, that while some of the old 
ladies may have been sealed to the Prophet as his 
spiritual wives only, these younger women elected 
him to be their lord and king years after his death. 

Joseph is the favorite bridegroom of the skies. Per- 
haps it is in nature, that if women are allowed to 
choose their spouses, they should select the occupants 



SEALING. 231 

of thrones; certain it is that many Mormon ladies 
yearn towards the bosom of Joseph, not poetically, 
as their Christian sisters speak of lying in the bosom 
of Abraham, but potentially, as the Hindoo votary of 
Krishna languishes for her darling god. Young, it is 
said, keeps all such converts to himself; the dead 
Prophet's dignity being so high that none save his 
successor in the temple is considered worthy to be his 
substitute in the harem. Beauties whom Joseph 
never saw in the flesh, who were infants and Gentiles 
when the riots of Carthage took place, are now sealed 
to him for eternity, and are bearing children in his 
name. 

Except the yearning of Hindoo women towards their 
darling idol, there is perhaps no madness of the earth 
so strange as this erotic passion of the female Saints 
for the dead. A lady of New York was smitten by 
an uncontrollable desire to become a wife to the mur- 
dered Prophet. She made her way to Salt Lake, 
threw herself at Brigham's feet, and prayed with gen- 
uine fervor to be sealed to him in Joseph's name. 
Young did not want her; his harem was full; his 
time was occupied : he put her off" with words ; he sent 
her away ; but the ardor of her passion was too hot, 
to damp, too strong to stem. She took him by assault, 
and he at length gave way ; after sealing her to Joseph 
for eternity, he accepted towards her the office of sub- 
stitute in time, and carried her to his house. 

On the other side, the Mormons affect to have such 
power over spirits as to be able to seal the dead to the 
living. Elder Stenhouse tells me that he has one dead 
wife, who was sealed to him, by her own entreaty, 
after her death. He had known this young lady very 
well ; he describes her as beautiful and charming ; she 
had captivated his fancy ; and in due time, had she 



232 NEW AMEBIC A. 

lived, he might have proposed to make her his wife. 
While he was absent from Salt Lake City on a mis- 
sion, she fell sick and died ; on her death-bed she ex- 
pressed an ardent wish to be sealed to him for eternity, 
that she might share the glories of his celestial throne. 
Young made no objection to her suit; and on Sten- 
house's return from Europe to Salt Lake the rite was 
performed, in the presence of Brigham and others, his 
first wife standing proxy for the dead girl, both at the 
altar and afterwards. He counts the lost beauty as 
one of his wives ; believing that she will reign with 
him in heaven. 



CHAPTER XXXH. 

WOMAN AT SALT LAKE. 

And what, as regards the woman herself, is the 
visible issue of this strange experiment in social and 
family life ? 

During our fifteen days' residence among the Saints, 
we have had as many opportunities aflbrded us for 
forming a judgment on this question as has ever been 
given to Gentile travellers. We have seen the Presi- 
dent and some of the apostles daily; we have been 
received into many Mormon houses, and introduced 
to nearly all the leading Saints; we have dined at their 
tables; we have chatted with their wives; we have 
romped and played with their children. The feelings 
which we have gained as to the effect of Mormon life 
on the character and position of woman, are the 
growth of care, of study, and experience ; and our 



WOMAN A T SAL T LAKE. 233 

friends at Salt Lake, we hope, while they will differ 
from our views, will not refuse to credit us with can- 
dor and good faith. 

If you listen to the elders only, you would fancy 
that the idea of a plurality of wives excites in the 
female breast the wildest fanaticism. They tell you 
that a Mormon preacher, dwelling on the examples of 
Sarai and of Rachel, iinds his most willing listeners 
on the female benches. They say that a ladies' club 
was formed at Nauvoo to foster polygamy, and to 
make it the fashion ; that mothers preach it to their 
daughters ; that poetesses praise it. They ask you to 
believe that the first wife, being head of the harem, 
takes upon herself to seek out and court he prettiest 
girls ; only too proud and happy when she can bring 
a new Hagar, a new Billah to her husband's arms. 

This male version of the facts is certainly supported 
by such female writers as Belinda Pratt. 

In my opinion, Mormonism is not a religion for 
woman. I will not say that it degrades her, for the 
term degradation is open to abuse ; but it certainly 
lowers her, according to our Gentile ideas, in the 
social scale. In fact, woman is not in society here at 
all. The long blank walls, the embowered cottages, 
the empty windows, doorways, and verandas, all sug- 
gest to an English eye something of the jealousy, the 
seclusion, the subordination of a Moslem harem, rather 
than the gayety and freedom of a Christian home. 
Men rarely see each other at home, still more rarely 
in the company of their wives. Seclusion seems to be 
a fashion wherever polygamy is the law. N^ow, by 
itself, and apart from all doctrines and moralities, the 
habit of secluding women from society must tend to 
dim their sight and dull their hearing; for if conver- 
sation quickens men, it still more quickens women ; 
20* 



234 NEW AMU BIG A. 

and we can roundly say, after experience in many 
households at Salt Lake, that these Mormon ladies 
have lost the practice and the power of taking part 
even in such light talk as animates a dinner-table and 
a drawing-room. We have met with only one excep- 
tion to this rule, that of a lady who had been upon the 
stage. In some houses, the wives of our hosts, with 
babies in their arms, ran about the rooms, fetching in 
champagne, drawing corks, carrying cake and fruit, 
lighting matches, iceing water, while the men were 
lolling in chairs, putting their feet out of window, 
smoking cigars, and tossing off beakers of wine. 
(N. B. — Abstinence from wine and tobacco is recom- 
mended by Young and taught in the Mormon schools; 
but we found cigars in many houses, and wine in all 
except in the hotels !) The ladies, as a rule, are plainly, 
not to say poorly, dressed; with no bright colors, no 
gay flounces and furbelows. They are very quiet and 
subdued in manner, with what appeared to us an un- 
natural calm ; as if all dash, all sportiveness, all life, 
had been preached out of them. They seldom smiled, 
except with a wai'i and wearied look ; and though they 
are all of English race, we have never heard them 
laugh with the bright merriment of our English girls. 
They know very little, and feel an interest in very 
few things. I assume that they are all great at 
nursing, and I know that many of them are clever at 
drying and preserving fruit. But they are habitually 
shy and reserved, as though they were afraid lest your 
bold opinion on a sunset, on a watercourse, or a 
mountain-range, should be considered by their lords 
as a dangerous intrusion on the sanctities of domestic 
life. While you are in the house, they are brought 
into the public room as children are with us ; they 
come in for a moment, curtsy and shake hands; then 



WOMAN AT SALT LAKE. 235 

drop out again, as though they felt themselves in 
company rather out of place. I have never seen this 
sort of shyness among grown women, except in a 
Syrian tent. Anything like the ease and bearing of 
an English lady is not to be found in Salt Lake, even 
among the households of the rich. Here, no woman 
reigns. Here, no woman hints by her manner that 
she is mistress of her own house. She does not 
always sit at table; and when she occupies a place 
beside her lord, it is not at the head, but on one of 
the lower seats. In fact, her life does not seem to lie 
in the parlor and the dining-room, so much as in the. 
nursery, the kitchen, the laundry, and the fruit-shed. 

The grace, the play, the freedom of a young English 
lady, are quite unknown to her Mormon sister. Only 
when the subject of a plurality of wives has been 
under consideration between host and guest, have I 
ever seen a Mormon lady's face grow bright, and then 
it was to look a sentiment, to hint an opinion, the 
reverse of those maintained by Belinda Pratt. 

I am convinced that the practice of marrying a 
plurality of wives is not popular with the female 
Saints. Besides what I have seen and heard from 
Mormon wives, themselves living in polygamous 
families, I have talked, alone and freely, with eight or 
nine different girls, all of whom have lived at Salt 
Lake for two or three years. They are undoubted 
Mormons, who have made many sacrifices for their 
religion ; but after seeing the family life of their 
fellow-Saints, they have one and all become firmly 
hostile to polygamy. Two or three of these girls are 
pretty, and might have been married in a month. 
They have been courted very much, and one of them 
has received no less than seven offers. Some of her 
lovers are old and rich, some young and poor, with 



236 N^W AMERICA. 

their fortunes still to seek. The old fellows have 
already got their houses full of wives, and she will not 
fall into the train as either a fifth or a fifteenth spouse ; 
the young men being true Saints, will not promise to 
confine themselves for ever to their earliest vows, and 
so she refuses to wed any of them. All these girls 
prefer to remain single, — to live a life of labor and 
dependence — as servants, chambermaids, milliners, 
charwomen, — to a life of comparative ease and leisure 
in the harem of a Mormon bishop. 

It is a common belief, gathered in a great measure 
from the famous letter on plurality by Belinda Pratt, 
that the Mormon Sarai is willing to seek out, and 
eager to bestow, any number of Hagars on her lord. 
More than one Saint has told me that this is true, as a 
rule, though he admits there may be exceptions in so 
far as the Mormon Sarai falls short of her high calling. 
My experience lies among the exceptions solely. Some 
wives may be good enough to undertake this office. I 
have never found one who would own it, even in the 
presence of her husband, and when the occasion might 
have been held to warrant a little feminine fibbing. 
Every lady to whom I have put this question flushed 
iiito denial, though with that caged and broken courage 
which seems to characterize every Mormon wife. 
"Court a new wife for him!" said one lady; "no 
woman could do that ; and no woman would submit 
to be courted by a woman." 

The process of taking either a second or a sixteenth 
wife is the same in all cases. " I will tell you," said 
a Mormon elder, " how we do these things in our 
order. For example, I have two wives living, and 
one wife dead. I am thinking of taking another, as 
I can well afford the expense, and a man is not much 
respected in the church who has less than three wives. 



WOMAN AT SALT LAKE, 237 

Well, I fix my mind on a young lady, and consider 
within myselip whether it is the will of God that I 
should seek her. If I feel, in my own heart, that it 
would be right to try, I speak to my bishop, who 
advises and approves, as he shall see fit ; on which I 
go to the President, who will consider whether I am a 
good man and a worthy husband, capable of ruling 
my little household, keeping peace among my wives, 
bringing up my children in the fear of God ; and if I 
am found worthy, in his sight, of the blessing, I shall 
obtain permission to go on with the chase. Then I 
lay the whole matter of my desire, my permission and 
my choice, before my first wife, as head of my house, 
and take her counsel as to the young lady's habits, 
character, and accomplishments. Perhaps I may 
speak with my second wife ; perhaps not ; since it is 
not so much her business as it is that of my first wife ; 
besides which, my first wife is older in years, has seen 
more of life, and is much more of a friend to me than 
the second. An objection on the first wife's part 
would have great weight with me ; I should not care 
much for what the second either said or thought. 
Supposing all to go well, I should next have a talk 
with the young lady's father; and if he consented to 
my suit, I should then address the young lady herself." 

"But before you take all these pains to get her," I 
asked, " would you not have tried to be sure of your 
ground with the lady herself? Would you not have 
courted her and won her good will before taking all 
these persons into your trust? " 

"1^0," answered the elder; "I should think that 
wrong. In our society we are strict. I should have 
seen the girl, in the theatre, in the tabernacle, in the 
social hall ; I should have talked with her, danced with 
her, walked about with her, and in these ways ascer- 



238 NEW AMERICA. 

tained her merits and guessed her inclinations ; but I 
should not have made love to her, in your sense of the 
word, got up an understanding with her, and entered 
into a private and personal engagement of the affec- 
tions. These affairs are not of earth, but of heaven, 
and with us they must follow the order of God's king- 
dom and church." 

This elder's two wives live in separate houses, and 
seldom see each other. While we have been at Salt 
Lake, a child of the second wife has fallen sick ; there 
has been much trouble in the house ; and we have 
heard the first wife, at whose cottage we were dining, 
say she would go and pay the second wife a visit. 
The elder would not hear of such a thing ; and he 
was certainly right, as the sickness was supposed to be 
diphtheria, and she had a brood of little folks plajang 
about her knees. Still the manner of her proposal 
told us that she was not in the habit of daily inter- 
course with her sister-wife. 

It is an open question in Utah whether it is better 
for a plural household to be gathered under one roof 
or not. Young sets the example of unity, so far at 
least as his actual wives and children are concerned. 
A few old ladies, who have been sealed to him for 
heaven, whether in his own name or in that of Jo- 
seph, dwell in cottages apart ; but the dozen women, 
who share his couch, who are the mothers of his chil- 
dren, live in one block close to another, dine at one 
table, and join in the family prayers. Taylor, the 
apostle, keeps his families in separate cottages and 
orchards ; two of his wives only live in his principal 
house ; the rest have tenements of their own. Every 
man is free to arrange his household as he likes ; so 
long as he avoids contention, and promotes the public 
peace. 



WOMAN AT SALT LAKE. 239 

" How will you arrange your visits, when you have 
won and sealed your new wife ? " I asked my friendly 
and communicative elder; "shall you adopt the Ori- 
ental custom of equal justice and attention to the 
ladies laid down by Moses and by Mohammed?" 

" By heaven, sir," he answered, with a flush of 
scorn, "no man shall tell me what to do, except 
" giving the initials of his name. 

" You mean you will do as you like ? " 

" That 's just it:' 

And such, I believe, is the universal habit of 
thought in this city and this church. Man is king, 
and woman has no rights. She has, in fact, no re- 
cognized place in creation, other than that of a ser- 
vant and companion of her lord. Man is master, 
woman is slave. I cannot wonder that girls who re- 
member their English homes should shrink from 
marriage in this strange community, even though 
they have accepted the doctrine of Young, that plu- 
rality is the law of heaven and of God. " I believe 
it 's right," said to me a rosy English damsel, who has 
been three years in Utah, " and I think it is good for 
those who like it ; but it is not good for me, and I 
will not have it." 

"But if Young should command you?" 

"He won't!" said the girl with the toss of her 
golden curls ; " and if he were to do so, I would not. 
A girl can please herself whether she marries or not; 
and I, for one, will never go into a house where there 
is another wife." 

"Do the wives dislike' it?" 

" Some don't, most do. They take it for their reli- 
gion ; I can't say any woman likes it. Some women 
live very comfortably together ; not many;' most have 
their tiffs and quarrels, though their husbands may 



240 NUW AMERICA. 

never know of them, ^^o woman likes to see a new 
wife come into the house." 

A Saint would tell you that such a damsel as my 
rosy" friend is only half a Mormon yet; he would 
probably ask you to reject such evidence as trumpery 
and temporary ; and plead that you can have no fair 
means of judging such an institution as polygamy, 
until you are able to study its effects in the fourth 
and fifth generation. 

Meanwhile, the judgment which we have formed 
about it from what we have seen and heard may be 
expressed in a few words. It finds a new place for 
woman, which is not the place she occupies in the 
society of England and the United States. It trans- 
fers her from the drawing-room to the kitchen, and 
when it finds her in the nursery it locks her in it. 
We may call such a change a degradation ; the Mor- 
mons call" it a reformation. We do not say that any 
of these Mormon ladies have been worse in their mo- 
ralities and their spiritualities by the change ; proba- 
bly they have not; but in everything that concerns 
their grace, order, rank, and representation in society, 
they are unquestionably lowered, according to our 
standards. Male Saints declare that in this city 
women have become more domestic, wifely, motherly, 
than they are among the Gentiles; and that what they 
have lost in show, in brilliancy, in accomplishment, 
they have gained in virtue and in service. To me, 
the very best women appear to be little more than 
domestic drudges, never rising into the rank of real 
friends and companions of their lords. Taylor's 
daughters waited on us at table ; two pretty, elegant, 
English-looking girls. We should have preferred 
standing behind their chairs and helping them to 
dainties of fowl and cake; but the Mormon, like the 



THE REPUBLICAN PLATEORM. 241 

Moslem, keeps a heavy hand on his female folks. 
Women at Salt Lake are made to keep their place. 
A girl must address her father as " Sir," and she 
would hardly presume to sit down in his presence 
until she had received his orders. 

"Women," said Young to me, "will be more easily 
saved than men. They have not sense enough to go 
far wrong. Men have more knowledge and more 
power ; therefore they can go more quickly and more 
certainly to hell." 

The Mormon creed appears to be that woman is 
not worth damnation. 

In the Mormon heaven, men, on account of their 
sins, may stop short in the stage of angels ; but 
women, whatever their offences, are all to become 
the wives of o:ods. 



CHAPTER XXXm. 

THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM. 

"We mean to put that business of the Mormons 
through," says a New England jjolitician ; " we have 
done a bigger job than that in the South ; and we 
shall now fix up things in Salt Lake City." 

"Do you mean by force?" asks an English trav- 
eller. 

" Well, that is one of our planks. The Republican 
Platform pledges us to crush those Saints." 

This conversation, passing across the hospitable 
board of a renowned publicist in Philadelphia, draws 
towards itself from all sides the criticism of a distin- 
21 



242 NEW AMERICA. 

guished company of lawyers and politicians; most of 
them members of Congress ; all of them soldiers of 
the Republican phalanx. 

"Do you hold," says the English guest, — "you as a 
writer and thinker, — your party as the representatives 
of American thought and might, — that in a country 
where speech is free and tolerance wide, it would be 
right to employ force against ideas, — to throw horse 
and foot into a dogmatic quarrel, — to set about pro- 
moting morality with bayonets and bowie-knives?" 

"It is one of our planks," says a young member of 
Congress, " to put down those Mormons, who, besides, 
being infidels, are also Conservatives and Copper- 
heads." 

"Young is certain!}' a Democrat," adds an Able 
Editor from Massachusetts, himself a traveller in the 
Mormon land; "Ave have no right to burn his block 
on account of his politics ; nor, indeed, on account of 
hi < religion ; we ave no power to meddle with any 
man's faith ; but we have made a law against j)lurality 
of wives, and we have the power to make our laws 
respected everywhere in this Republic?" 

"By force?" 

" By force, if we are driven by disloyal citizens to 
the use of force." 

"You mean, then, that in any case you will use force 
— passively, if they submit; actively, if they resist?" 

" That's our notion," replies our candid host. "The 
government must crush them. That is our big job ; 
and next year we must put it through." 

" You hold it right, then, to combat such an evil as 
polygamy with shot and shell?" 

"We have freed four million negroes with shot and 
shell?" replies a sober Pennsylvanian judge. 

" Pardon me, is that a full statement of the case ? 



THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM. 243 

That you have crushed a movement of secession by 
means of military force is true ; but is it not also true 
that, five or six years ago, every one acknowledged 
that slavery was a legal and moral question, which, 
while peace and order reigned in the slave-states, ought 
not to be treated otherwise than on legal and moral 
grounds?" 

" Yes, that is so. We had no right over the negroes 
until their masters went into rebellion. I admit that 
the declaration of war gave us our only standing." 

" In fact, you confess that you had no right over the 
blacks until you had gained, through the rebellion, a 
complete authority over the whites who held them in 
bondage?" 

" Certainly so." 

"If, then, the planters had been quiet; keeping to 
the law as it then stood ; never attempting to spread 
themselves by force, as they tried to do in Kansas ; you 
would have been compelled, by your sense of right, to 
leave them to time and reason, to the exhaustion of 
their lands, to the depopulation of their States, to the 
growth of sound economical knowledge, — in short, to 
the moral forces which excite and sustain all social 
growths ? " 

" Perhaps so," answers the Able Editor. " The Saints 
have not yet given us such a chance. They are very 
honest, sober, industrious people, who mind their own 
business mainly, as men will have to do who try to 
live in yon barren plains. They are useful in their 
way, too ; linking our Atlantic states with the Pacific 
states; and feeding the mining population of Idaho, 
Montana, and Nevada. We have no ground of com- 
plaint, none that a politician would prefer against 
them beyond their plural households; but New Eng- 
land is very sore just now about them ; for everybody 



244 NEW AMERICA. 

ill tliis country has got into the habit of calling them 
the spawn of our New England conventicles, simply 
because Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Heber Kim- 
ball, all the chief lights of their church, happen to be 
New England men." 

" When New England," adds a representative from 
Ohio, with a laugh, "goesniiad on any point, you will 
find that she contrives in this Republic to have her 
way." 

"When her way is just and open — sanctioned by 
moral principle and by human experience — it is well 
that she should have her way. But will Harvard and 
Cambridge support an attack by military power on 
religious bodies because they have adopted the model 
of Abraham and David ? You have in those western 
plains and mountains a hundred tribes of red-men who 
practise polygamy ; would you think it right for your 
missionary society to withdraw^ from among them the 
teacher and his Bible, and for General Grant to send 
out in their stead the soldier and his sword ? You have 
in those western territories a hundred thousand yellow 
men who also practise polygamy ; would you hold it 
just to sink their ships, to burn their ranches, to drive 
them from your soil, with sword and fire?" 

"Their case is difterent to that of the Saints," rejoins 
the Able Editor; "these red-skins and yellow-skins are 
savages ; one race may die out, the other may go back 
to Asia ; but Young and Kimball are our own people, 
knowing the law and the Gospel ; and whatever they 
may do with the Gospel, they must obey the law." 

" Of course, everybody must obey the law ; but how? 
Those Saints, I hear, have no objection to your law 
when administeredby judge and jury, only to your law 
when administered by colonels and subalterns." 

"In other w^ords," savs the Pennsylvanian judge, 



THE REPUPLIGAN PLATFORM. 245 

"they have no objection to our law when they are left 
to carry it out themselves." 

"We must put them down," cries the young mem- 
ber of Congress. 

" Have you not tried that policy of putting them 
down twice already ? Yon found them twelve thou- 
sand strong at Independence, in Missouri ; not liking 
their tenets (though they had no polygamy among 
them then), you crushed and scattered them into thirty 
thousand at Nauvoo ; where you again took arms 
against religious passion, slew their Prophet, plundered 
their city, drove them into the desert, and generally 
dispersed and destroj-ed them into one hundred and 
twenty-seven thousand in Deseret! You know that 
some such law of growth through persecution has been 
detected in every land and in every church. It is a 
proverb. In Salt Lake City, I heard Brigham Young 
tell his departing missionaries, they were not to sug- 
gest the beauty of their mountain home, but to dwell 
on the idea of persecution, and to call the poor into a 
persecuted church. Men fly into a persecuted church, 
like moths into a flame. If you want to make all the 
western country Mormon, you must send an army 
of a hundred thousand troops to the Rocky Moun- 
tains." 

"But we can hardly leave these pluralists alone." 

"Why not — so far at least as regards bayonets and 
bowie-knives ? Have you no faith in the power of 
truth? Have you no confidence in being right? Nay, 
are you sure that you have nothing to learn from 
them ? Have not the men who thrive where nobody 
else can live, given ample evidence that, even though 
their doctrines may be strange and their morals false, 
the principles on which they till the soil and raise their 
crops, are singularly sound ?" 
21* 



246 ^^"W AMEBIC A. 

"I admit," says the Able Editor, "they are good 
farmers." 

" Good is a poor term, to express the marvel they 
have wrought. In Illinois, they changed a swamp 
into a garden. In Utah, they have made the desert 
green with pastures and tawny with maize and corn. 
Of what is Brigham Young most fond ? Of his harem, 
his temple, his theatre, his office, his wealth ? He 
may pride himself on these things in their measure ; 
but the fact of his life which he dwelt upon most, and 
with the noblest enthusiasm, is the raising of a crop 
of ninety-three and a half bushels of wheat from one 
single acre of land. The Saints have grown rich with 
a celerity that seems magical even in the United 
States. Beginning life at the lowest stage, recruited 
only from among the poor, spoiled of their goods and 
driven from their farms, compelled to expend millions 
of dollars in a perilous exodus, and finally located on 
a soil from which the red-skin and the bison had all 
but retired in despair, they have yet contrived to exist, 
to extend their operations, to increase their stores. 
The hills and valleys round Salt Lake are everywhere 
smiling with wheat and rye. A city has been built; 
great roads have been made ; mills have been erected ; 
canals have been dug; forests have been felled. A 
depot has been formed in the wilderness from which 
the miners from Montana and Nevada can be fed. A 
chain of communication from St. Louis to San Fran- 
cisco has been laid. Are the Republican majority 
prepared to undo the progress of twenty years in 
order to curb an obnoxious doctrine? Are they sure 
that the attempt being made, it would succeed ? What 
facts in the past history of these Saints permit you to 
infer that persecution, however sharp, would diminish 
their nimiber, their audacity, and their zeal ? " 



THE REP UBLIGA N PL A TFORM. 24 7 

" Then you see no way of crushing them ? " 
"Crashing them! No; none. I see no way of 
dealing with any moral and religious question except 
by moral means employed in a religious spirit. Why 
not put your trust in truth, in logic, in history ? Why 
not open good roads to Salt Lake ? Why not encour- 
age railway communication ; and bring the practical 
intellect and noble feeling of New England to bear 
upon the household. of many wives? Why not meet 
their sermons by sermons ; try their science by sci- 
ence ; encounter their books with books? Have you 
no missionaries equal to Elder Stenhouse and Ekler 
Dewey ? You must expect that while you act on the 
Saints, the Saints will re-act upon you. It will be for 
you a trial of strength ; but the weapons will be legit- 
imate and the conclusions will be blessed. Can you 
not trust the right side and the just cause, to come out 
victoriously from such a struggle ? " 

"Well," says the judge, "while we are divided in 
opinion, perhaps, as to the use of physical force, we 
are all in favor of moral force. Massachusetts is our 
providence ; but, after all, we must have one law in 
this Republic. Union is our motto, equality our creed. 
Boston and Salt Lake City must be got to shake hands, 
as Boston and Charleston have already done. If 3'ou 
can persuade Brigham to lie down with Bowles, I am 
willing to see it And now pass the wine." 



248 NEW AMERICA. 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

UNCLE SAM'S estate. 

In climbing the slopes of you rivers from New'York 
to Toledo; in running down the Mississippi Valley 
from Toledo to St. Louis ; in mounting the Prairies 
from St. Louis to Virginia Dale; in crossing the Sier- 
ras from Virginia Dale to the Great Salt Lake; in 
winding through the "Wasatch chain, the Bitter-creek 
country, and the Plains from Salt Lake City to Oma- 
ha; in descending the Missouri from the middle waters 
to its mouth; in traversing the table-lands of Indiana 
and Ohio; in threading the mountain-passes of Penn- 
sylvania; in piercing the forests, following the streams, 
lounging in the cities of Virginia; in pacing these 
streets of Washington, mixing with these people in 
the gardens of the White House, and under the dome 
of the Capitol, a man will find himself growing free 
of many great facts. He will be in daily contact with 
the newest forms of life, with a world in the earlier 
stages of its growth, with a society everywhere young 
in genius, enterprise, and virtue; but probably no 
other fact will strike his imagination with so large a 
force as the size of what is here called, in the idiom of 
the people. Uncle Sam's Estate. 

"Sir," said to me a Minnesota farmer, "the curse 
of this country is that we have too much land;" a 
phrase which I have heard again and again; among 
the iron-masters of Pittsburg, among the tobacco- 
planters of Richmond, among the cotton-spinners of 
Worcester. Indeed, this wail against the land is com- 



UNCLE SAM'B ESTATE. 249 

mon among men who, having mines, plantations, mills, 
and farms, wonld like to have large supplies of labor 
at lower rates of wages than the market yields. There 
have been times in which a similar cry was raised in 
England, by the Norfolk farmers, by the Manchester 
spinners, by the Newcastle coalmen. Those who want 
to get labor on the lowest terms must always be in favor 
of restricting the productive acreage of land. But 
whether a Minnesota farmer, a Pennsylvania miner, 
or a Massachusetts cotton-spinner, may like it or dis- 
like it, nobody can dispute the fact that the first im- 
pression stamped on a traveler's eye and brain in this 
great country is that of stupendous size. 

During the Civil War, when the Trent aftair was 
waxing warm between the two main branches of our 
race — a brother's quarrel, in which there was some 
right and a little wrong on both sides — a New York 
publisher put out a map of the United States and Ter- 
ritories, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the 
Pacific Ocean, from the line of the great lakes to the 
gulfs of Mexico and California; on the margin of 
which map there was an outline of England drawn to 
scale. Perhaps it had not been designed by the 
draughtsman to rebuke our pride; still, it made us 
look very small on paper; and if we had been a people 
piquing ourselves on the possession of "much dirt" in 
the Home County called England, that map might 
have cut us to the quick. Space is not one of our 
island points. In three or four hours we hurry from 
sea to sea, from Liverpool to Hull, from the Severn to 
the Thames; in the lapse between breakfast and din- 
ner we wing our way from London to York, from 
Manchester to Norwich, from Oxford to Penzance. It 
is the common joke of New York, that a Yankee in 
London dares not leave his hotel after dark lest he 



250 NEW AMERICA. 

should slip off the foreland and be drowned in the 
sea. 

The Republic owns within her two ocean frontiers 
more than three million square miles of land; a fourth 
part of a million square miles of water, either salt or 
fresh; a range of Alps, a range of Pyrenees, a range 
of Apennines; forests by the side of which the 
Schwarzwald and the Ardennes would be German 
toys; rivers exceeding the Danube and the Rhine, 
as much as these rivers exceed the Mersey and the 
Clyde. 

Under the crystal roof in Hyde Park, when the 
nations had come together in 1851, each bringing 
what it found to be its best and rarest to a common 
testing place, America was for many weeks of May 
and June represented by one great article — a vast, un- 
occupied space. An eagle spread its wings over an 
empty kingdom, while the neighboring states of Bel- 
gium, Holland, Prussia, and France were crowded 
like swarms of bees in their summer hives. Some 
persons smiled with a mocking lip, at that paper bird, 
brooding in silence above a mighty waste; but I for 
one never came from the thronging courts of Europe 
into that large allotment of space and light, without 
feeling that our cousins of the West had hit, though 
it may have been by chance, on a very happy expres- 
sion of their virgin wealth. In Hyde Park, as at 
home, they showed that they had room enough and to 
spare. 

Yes: the Republic is a Dig country. In England, 
we have no lines of sufficient length, no areas of suf- 
ficient width, to convey a just idea of its size. Our 
longest line is that running from Land's End to Ber- 
wick, — a line which is some miles shorter than the 
distance from Washington to Lexington. Our broad- 



UNCLE SAM'S ESTATE. 251 

est valley is that of the Thames, — the whole of which 
would lie hidden from sight in a corner of the Sierra 
Madre. The State of Oregon is higger than England; 
California is about the size of Spain ; Texas would be 
larger than France if France had won the frontier of 
the German Rhine. If the United States were parted 
into equal lots, they would make fifty-two kingdoms 
as large as England, fourteen empires as large as 
France. Even the grander figure of Europe, — the 
seat of our great powers, and of many lesser powers, — 
a continent which we used to call the world, and fight 
to maintain in delicate balance of parts, — fails us when 
we come to measure in its lines such amplitudes as 
those of the United States. To wit; from Eastport to 
Brownsville is farther than from London to Tuat, in 
the Great Sahara; from Washington to Astoria is fiir- 
ther than from Brussels to Kars; from New York to 
San Francisco is farther than from Paris to Bagdad. 
Such measures seem to carry us away fi-om the sphere 
of fact into the realms of magic and romance. 

Again, take the length of rivers as a measurement 
of size. A steamboat can go ninety miles up the 
Thames; two hundred miles up the Seine; five hun- 
dred and fifty miles up the Rhine. In America, the 
Thames would be a creek, the Seine a brook, the Rhine 
a local stream, soon lost in a mightier flood. Some of 
these great rivers, like the Kansas and the Platte, flow- 
ing through boundless plains, are nowhere deep enough 
for steamers, though they are sometimes miles in width; 
yet the navigable length of many of these streams is a 
wearisome surprise. The Mississippi is five times longer 
than the Rhine; the Missouri is three times longer than 
the Danube; the Columbia is four times longer than 
the Scheldt. From the sea to Fort Snelling, the Mis- 
sissippi is plowed by steamers a distance of two thou- 



252 NEW AMERICA. 

sand one hundred and thirty-one miles; yet she is but 
the second river in the United States, 

Glancing at a map of America, we see to the north 
a group of lakes. JS'ow, our English notion of a lake 
is likely to have been derived from Coniston, Killarney, 
Lomond, Leman, and Garda. But these sheets of water 
give us no true hint of what Huron and Superior are 
like, scarcel}^ indeed of what Erie and Ontario are like. 
Coniston, Killarney, Lomond, Leman, and Garda, put 
together, would not cover a tenth part of the surface 
occupied by the smallest of the five American lakes. 
All the waters lying in Swiss, Italian, Englisli, Irish, 
Scotch, and German lakes, might be poured into 
Michigan without making a perceptible addition to its 
flood. Yorkshire might be sunk out of sight in Erie; 
Ontario drowns as much land as would make two 
duchies equal in area to Schleswig and Holstein. Den- 
mark proper could be washed by the waves of Huron. 
Many of the minor lakes of America would be counted 
as inland seas elsewhere; to wit. Salt Lake, in Utah, 
has a surface of two thousand square miles; while that 
of Geneva has only three hundred and thirty; that of 
Como, only ninety; that of Killarney, only eight. A 
kingdom like Saxony, a principality like Parma, a 
duchy like Coburg, if thrown in one heap into Lake 
Superior, might add an island to its beauty, but would 
be no more conspicuous in its vast expanse than 
one of those pretty green islets which adorn Loch 
Lomond. 

Mountain masses are not considered by some as the 
strongest points of American scenery; yet you find 
masses in this country which defy all measurement by 
such puny chains as the Pyrenees, the Apennines, 
and the Savoy Alps. The Alleghanies, ranging in 



UNGLE SAM'S ESTATE. 253 

height between Helvelljn and Pilatus, run through a 
district equal in extent to the country lying between 
Ostend and Jaroslaw. The Wasatch chain, though 
the name is hardly known in Europe, has a larger bulk 
and grandeur than the Julian Alps. The Sierra Madre, 
commonly called the Rocky Mountains, ranging in 
stature from a little below Snowdon to a trifle above 
Mont Blanc, extend from Mexico, through the Repub- 
lic into British America, a distance almost equal to that 
dividing London from Delhi. 

No doubt, then, can be felt as to the size of this 
Anglo-Saxon estate. America is a big country; and 
size, as we know in other things, becomes, in the long 
run, a measure of political power. 

Leaving out of view all rivers, all lakes, there re- 
main in the United States about one thousand nine 
hundred and twenty-six million acres; nearly all of 
them productive land; forest, prairie, down, alluvial 
bottom; all lying in the temperate zone; healthy in 
climate, rich in wood, in coal, in oil, in iron; a landed 
estate that could give to each head of five million fami- 
lies a lot of three hundred and eighty-five acres. 



22 



254 ^^W AMERICA. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE FOUR RACES. 

On this fine estate of laud and water dwells a strange 
variety of races. No society in Europe can pretend to 
such wide contrasts in the type, in the color, as are 
here observable; for while in France, in Germany, in 
England, we are all white men, deriving our blood and 
lineage from a common Aryan stock, and having in 
our habits, languages, and creeds, a certain bond of 
brotherhood, our friends in these United States, in ad- 
dition to such pale varieties as the Saxon and Celt, the 
Swabian and Caul, have also the Sioux, and N"egro, 
and the Tartar; nations and tribes, not few in num- 
ber, not guests of a moment, here to-day and gone to- 
morrow; but crowding hosts of men and women, who 
have the rights which come of either being born on 
the soil or of being settled on it for life. White men, 
black men, red men, yellow men; they are citizens of 
this country, paying its taxes, feeding on its produce, 
obeying its laws. 

In England we are apt to boast of having fused into 
one strong amalgam men of the most hostile qualities 
of blood; blending into a perfect unit the steadfast 
Saxon, the volatile Celt, the splendid Norman, and the 
frugal Pict; but our faint distinctions of race and race 
fade wholly out of sight when they are put alongside 
of the fierce antagonism seen on this American soil. 
In the Old World we have separate classes, where in 
this new country they have opposite nations; we have 




THE FOUR RACES. 



THE FOUR RACES. 255 

slight variation in the quahty, where they have radical 
difference in the type. To a negro in Georgia, to a 
Pawnee in Dakota, to a Chinese in Montana, a white 
man is just a white man; no more, no less; the Gaul, 
the Dane, the Spaniard, the Saxon, being, in his sim- 
ple eyes, brethren of one family, members of one 
churcli. Our subtler distinctions of race and race are 
wholly invisible m this stranger's eyes. 

In the western country you may sit down at dinner 
in some miner's house with a dozen guests, who shall 
not be matched, in contrasting types and colors, even 
in a Cairene bazaar, an Aleppo gateway, a Stamboul 
mosque. On either side of you may sit — a Polish Jew, 
an Italian count, a Choctaw chief, a Mexican rancher, 
a Confederate soldier (there called a "whitewashed 
reb"), a Mormon bishop, a Sandwich Island sailor, a 
Parsee merchant, a Boston bagman, a Missouri boss. 
A negro may cook your meat, a Chinese draw your 
cork, while the daughters of your host — bright girls, 
dainty, well dressed — may serve the dishes and pour 
out your wine; the whole company being drawn into 
these western regions by the rage for gold, and melt- 
ing toward each other, more like guests who dine in a 
E'ew York hotel than like strangers who come either 
to trade in an Egyptian bazaar, to lodge in a Syrian 
khan, or pray in a Turkish mosque. You may find, 
too, under one roof as many creeds as colors. Your 
host may be a Universalist; one of that soft American 
sect which holds that nobody on earth will ever be 
damned, though the generous and illogical fellow can 
hardly open his lips without calling on one of his 
guests to be so. The Mormon will put his trust in 
Joseph, as a natural seer and revelator; the Chinese 
will worship Buddha, of whom he knows nothing but 
the name ; the Jew will pray to Jehovah, of whom he 



256 NEW AMEBIC A. 

cannot be said to know much more. The Choctaw 
chief ma3^ invoke the Big Father, whom white men 
call for him the Great Spirit, Sam — all negroes there 
are Sams — may be a Methodist; an Episcopalian Meth- 
odist, mind you; Sam and his sable brethren hating 
everything that is low. The Italian count is an in- 
fidel; the Mexican a Catholic. Your whitewashed 
reb repudiating all religions, gives his mind to cock- 
tails. The Missourian is a Come-outer, a member of 
one of those new churches of America which profess 
to have brought God nearer to the earth. That the 
Parsee holds a private opinion about the sun we may 
fairly guess; Queen Emma's countryman is a Pagan; 
while the Boston bagman, now a Calvinist, damning 
the company to future miseries of fire and brimstone, 
was once a Communist of the school of Noyes. 

White men, black men, red men, yellow men — all 
these chief types and colors of the human race — have 
been drawn into company on this western soil, this 
middle continent, lying between China and the Archi- 
pelago on one side, Africa and Europe on the other, 
where they crowd and contest the ground under a com- 
mon flag. 

The White Man, caring for neither frost nor fire, so 
long as he can win good food for his mouth, fit clothing 
for his limbs, appears to be the master in every zone ; 
able to endure all climates, to undertake all labors, to 
overcome all trials; casting nets into the Bay of Fundy, 
cradling gold in the Sacramento Valleys, raising dates 
and lemons in Florida, trapping beavers in Oregon, 
raising herds of kine in Texas, spinning thread in 
Massachusetts, clearing woods in Kansas, smelting 
iron in Pennsylvania, talking buncombe in Columbia, 
writing leaders in New York. He is the man of 
plastic genius, of enduring character; equally at home 



THE FOUR RAGES. 257 

among tlie palm-trees and the pines; in every latitude 
the guide, the employer, and the king of all. 

The Black Man, a true child of the tropics, to whom 
warmth is like the breath of life, flees from those bleak 
fields of the North, in which the white man repairs his 
fiber and renews his blood; preferring the swamps and 
savannas of the South, where, among palms, cotton- 
plants, and sugar-canes, he finds the rich colors in which 
his eye delights, the sunny heats in which his blood 
expands. Freedom would not tempt him to go north- 
ward into frost and fog. Even now, when Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut tempt him by the ofier of 
good wages, easy work, and sympathizing people, he 
will not go to them. He only just endures New York; 
the most hardy of his race will hardly stay in Saratoga 
and Niagara beyond the summer months. Since the 
South has been made free for Sam to live in, he has 
turned his back on the cold and friendly North, in 
search of a brighter home. Sitting in the rice-field, 
by the canebrake, under the mulberry-trees of his dar- 
ling Alabama, with his kerchief round his head, his 
banjo on his knee, he is joyous as a bird, singing his 
endless and foolish roundelay, and feeling the sunshine 
burn upon his face. The negro is but a local fact in 
the country; having his proper home in a corner — the 
most sunny corner — of the United States. 

The Red Man, once a hunter of the Alleghanies, 
not less than of the prairies and the Rocky Mountains, 
has been driven by the pale-face, he and his squaw, his 
elk, his buffalo, and his antelope, into the far western 
country ; into the waste and desolate lands lying west- 
w^ard of the Mississippi and Missouri. The exceptions 
hardly break the rule. A band of picturesque peddlers 
may be found at Niagara; Red Jackets, Cherokee 
chiefs, and Mohawks ; selling bows and canes, and 



258 NEW AMERICA. 

generally sponging on those youths and damsels who 
roam about the Falls in search of opportunities to 
flirt. A colony, hardly of a better sort, may be found 
at Oneida Creek, in Madison County; the few sowing 
maize, growing fruit, and singing psalms; the many 
starving on the soil, cutting down the oak and maple, 
alienating the best acres, pining after their brethren 
who have thrown the white man's gift in his face, and 
gone away with their weapons and their war-paint. 
Red Jacket at the Falls, Bill Beechtree at Oneida 
Creek — the first selling beaded work to girls, the sec- 
ond twisting hickory canes for boys — are the last repre- 
sentatives of mighty nations, hunters and warriors, 
who at one time owned the broad lands from the Sus- 
quehanna to Lake Erie. Red Jacket will not settle; 
Bill Beechtree is incapable of work. The red-skin will 
not dig, and to beg he is not ashamed. Hence, he has 
been pushed away from his place, driven out by the 
spade, and kept at bay by the smoke of chimney tires. 
A wild man of the plain and forest, he makes his home 
with the wolf, the rattlesnake, the buflalo, and the elk. 
When the wild beast flies, the wild man follows. The 
Alleghany slopes, on which, only seventy years ago, 
he chased the elk and scalped the white woman, will 
hear his war-whoop, see his war-dance, feel his scalp- 
ing-knife, no more. In the western country he is still 
a figure in the landscape. From the Missouri to the 
Colorado he is master of all the open plains ; the forts 
which the white men have built to protect their road 
to San Francisco, like the Turkish block-houses built 
along the Syrian tracks, being mainly of use as a hint 
of their great reserve of power. The red men find it 
hard to lay down a tomahawk, to take up a hoe; some 
thousands only of them have yet done so; some hun- 
dreds only have learned from the whites to drink gin 



THE FOUR RACES. 259 

and bitters, to lodge in frame-houses, to tear np the 
soil, to forget the chase, the war-dance, and the Great 
Spirit. 

The Yellow Man, generally a Chinese, a Malay, 
sometimes a Dyak, has been drawn into the Pacific 
states from Asia, and from the Eastern Archipelago, 
by the hot demand for labor; any kind of which 
comes to him as a boon. From digging in the mine 
to cooking an omelette and ironing a shirt, he is equal 
to everything by which dollars can be gained. Of these 
yellow people there are now sixty thousand in Califor- 
nia, Utah, and Montana ; they come and go ; but many 
more of them come than go. As yet these harmless 
crowds are weak and useful. Hop Chang keeps a laun- 
dry ; Chi Hi goes out as cook ; Cum Thing is a maid- 
of-all-work. They are in no man's way, and they la- 
bor for a crust of bread; carrying the hod when Mike 
has run away to the diggings, and scrubbing the floor 
when Biddy has made some wretch the happiest of his 
sex. Supple and patient, these yellow men, though 
far from strong, are eager for any kind of work; but 
they prefer the employments of women to those of 
men; delighting in an engagement to wash clothes, to 
nurse babies, and to wait on guests. They make very 
good butlers and chamber-maids. Loo Sing, a jolly 
old girl in pig-tail, washes your shirts, starching and 
ironing them very neatly, except that you cannot per- 
suade him to refrain from spitting on your cuffs and 
fronts. To him spitting on linen is the same as damp- 
ing it with drops of water ; and the habits of his life 
prevent him, even though you should catch him by the 
pig-tail, and rub his tiny bit of nose on the burning 
iron, from seeing that it is not the same to you. To- 
day, those yellow men are sixty thousand weak; in a 
few years they may be six hundred thousand strong 



260 NEW AMERICA. 

They will ask for votes ; they will hold the balance 
of parties. In some districts they will make a major- 
ity; selecting the judges, forming the juries, interpret- 
ing the laws. Those yellow men are Buddhists, pro- 
fessing polygamy, practicing infanticide. Next year 
is not more sure to come in its own season than a great 
society of Asiatics to dwell on the Pacific slopes. A 
Buddhist church, fronting the Buddhist churches in 
China and Ceylon, will rise in California, Oregon, and 
Nevada. More than all, a war of labor will commence 
between the races which feed on beef and the races 
which thrive on rice ; one of those wars in which the 
victory is not necessarily with the strong. 

White man, black man, red man, yellow man, each 
has a custom of his own to follow, a genius of his own 
to prove, a conscience of his own to respect; custom 
which is not of kin, genius which is largely diflerent, 
and conscience which is fiercely hostile. These four 
great types might be represented to the eye by four of 
my friends : H. W. Longfellow, poet, Boston ; Eli 
Brown, waiter, Richmond ; Spotted Dog, savage, 
Rocky Mountains ; and Loo Sing, Laundry boy, Ne- 
vada. Under what circumstances will tliey blend into 
a common stock? 



SEX AND SEX. 261 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

SEX AND SEX. 

JSText, perhaps, after its huge size, and its varied 
races, the fact which is apt to strike a stranger most in 
the United States, is the disproportion almost every- 
where to be noted between sex and sex. 

To such a dinner as we have imagined taking place 
in the western country, no woman will have sat down ; 
not because there are no ladies in the house, but be- 
cause these ladies have something else to do than dine 
with guests. Your host may have been a married 
man, pluming iiimself with very good right, on his 
winsome wife, his bevy of sparkling girls ; but his wife 
and her daughters, instead of occupying seats at the 
board, will have to stand behind the chairs, handing 
round the dishes, pouring out the tea, aiding Loo Sing 
to uncork the wine. Females are few in yonder west- 
ern towns; you may spend day after day without fall- 
ing in sight of a pretty face. At the wayside inn, 
when you call for the chamber-maid, either Sam puts 
in his woolly head, or Chi Hi pops in his shaven crown. 
Hardly any help can be hired in those wastes ; Molly 
runs away with a miner ; Biddy gets married to a mer- 
chant ; and when guests ride in from the track, the 
fair creatures who live on the spot, the joy of some 
husband's home, of some father's eyes, have no choice 
beyond either sending these guests on their way, hun- 
gry, unrested, or cooking them a dinner and putting 
it on the board. At Salt Lake, in the houses of Mor- 
mon apostles and of wealthy merchants, we were al- 



262 NEW AMERICA. 

ways served by the youug ladies, often by extremely 
delicate and lovely girls. 

At first this novelty is rather hard to bear ; not by 
the ladies so much as by their guests. To see a woman 
who has just been quoting Keats and playing Gounod, 
standing up behind your seat, uncorking catawba, 
whipping away plates, and handing you the sauce, is 
trying to the nerves, especially when you are young 
and passably polite. In time you get used to it, as 
you do to the sight of a scalping-knife, to the sound 
of a war-whoop ; but what can a lady at the mines, on 
the prairies, on the lonely farmsteads, do when a guest 
drops in ? Help she has none, excepting Sam and Loo 
Sing. In that district of many males and few females, 
every girl is a lady, almost every woman is a wife. 
Men may be hired at a fair day's wage, to do any kind 
of male labor; to cook your food, to groom your horse, 
to trim your garden, to cut your wood; but women to 
do female work, to make the beds, to serve at table, to 
nurse the bairns; no, not for the income of a bishop, 
can you get them. Biddy can do better. Girls who 
are young and pretty have a lottery full of prizes ready 
to their hand ; even those who may be old and plain 
can have husbands when they please. Everywhere west 
of the Mississippi there is a brisk demand for women; 
and what girl of spirit would let herself out for hire 
when the church door is open, and the bridal bells are 
ready? Who would accept the possition of a wo- 
man's help when she has only to say the word, and 
become a man's help-mate ? 

Your hostess on the Plains m.Siy have been well born, 
well educated, well dressed ; both she herself and her 
bevy of girls maybe such as would be considered mag- 
netic in Fifth Avenue, attractive in May Fair, They 
may speak French very well; and when some of you 



SEX AND SEX. 263 

selfish fellows gathered under their window to smoke 
and chat, they will have charmed your ears with the 
most brilliant passages from Faust. Now, to hear 
Sibyl's serenade in the shadow of the Rocky Mount- 
ains is a treat on which you may not have counted; 
but the fact remains that only one hour earlier in the 
day the contralto has been acting as your cook. Once 
before in my life the same sort of thing has occurred 
to me; in Morocco, where a dark-eyed Judith, daugh- 
ter of a Jew in whose house I was lodging for the 
night, first fried my supper of fowls and tomatoes, and 
then lulled me to sleep by the notes of her guitar as 
she sat on the door-step. 

This comedy of the sexes may be found in action, 
not only out yonder in Colorado and the western prai- 
ries, but here in the shadow of the Capitol, in every 
State of the Union, almost in every city of each State. 
After all the havoc of war, — of which this disparity 
between males and females was an active, though an 
unseen, cause, — the evidence of inequality meets you 
at every turn ; in the ball-rooms at "Washington, in the 
streets of New York, in the chapels of Boston, at the 
dinner-tables of Richmond, as well as among the frame 
sheds of Omaha, in the plantations of Atlanta, in the 
miners' huts near Denver, in the theater of Salt Lake 
City. The cry is everywhere for girls; girls — more 
girls! In a hundred voices you hear the echoes of a 
common want; the ladies cannot find servants, the 
dancers cannot get partners, the young men cannot 
win wives. I was at a ball on the Missouri River 
where half the men had to sit down, though the girls 
obligingly danced every set. 

Compared against the society of Paris and of Lon- 
don, that of America seems to be all awry. Go into 
the Madeleine, — it is full of ladies ; go into St. James's 



264 NEW A3IERICA. 

Palace, — it is full of ladies. Every house in England 
has excess of daughters, about whom mothers have 
their little dreams, not always unmixed with a little 
fear. When Blanche is thirty, and still unsettled, her 
very father must begin to doubt of her ever going out 
into life. An old adage says that a girl at twenty says 
to herself, Who will suit me ? at thirty, Whom shall I 
suit ? Here in America it is not the woman, but the 
man, who is a drug in the matrimonial market. No 
Yankee girl is bound, like a Scottish lassie, like an 
Irish kerne, to serve in another woman's house for 
bread. Her face is her fortune and her lips a prize; 
her love more precious than her labor; her two bright 
orbs of more value than even her nimble hands. War 
may have thinned, to her disadvantage, the rank and 
file of lovers, but the losses of male life by shot and 
shell, by fever and ague, by waste and privation, have 
been more than replaced to her from Europe ; and the 
disproportions of sex and sex, noted before the war 
broke out, are said to be greater since its close. The 
lists are crowded with bachelors wanting wives ; the 
price of young men is ruling down, and only the hand- 
some, well-doing fellows have a chance of going off! 

This sketch is no effort of a fancy, looking for ex- 
tremes and loving the grotesque. When the census 
was compiled (in 1860), the white males were found to 
be in excess of the white females, by seven hundred 
and thirty thousand souls. Such a fact has no fellow 
in Europe, except in the Papal States, where society is 
made by exceptional forces, governed by exceptional 
rules. In every other Christian country, — in France, 
England, Germany, Spain, — the females are in large 
excess of the males. In France there are two hundred 
thousand women more than men; in England three 
hundred and sixty-five thousand. The unusual rule 



• SEX AND SEX. 265 

here noticed in America is not confined to any district, 
any sea-board, any zone. Out of fifty-two organized 
States and Territories, only eight exhibit the ordinary 
rule of European countries. Eight old settlements are 
supplied with women ; that is to say, Maryland, Massa- 
chusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, 
North Carolina, Rhode Island, Columbia; while the 
other fifty-four settlements, purchases, and conquests, 
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, lack this 
element of a stable, orderly, and virtuous state, — a 
wife for every young man of a proper age to marry. 
In some of the western regions, the disparity is such 
as strikes the moralist with awe: in California there 
are three men to every woman; in Washington, four 
men to ev^'y woman; in Nevada, eight men to 
every woman; in Colorado, twenty men to every 
woman. 

This disparity between sex and sex is not wholly 
caused, as will be thought, by the large immigration 
of single men. It is so in degree, no doubt, since far 
more males arrive by ship at Boston and New York 
than females; but if all the new-comers were sent 
back, if no fresh male was allowed to land in New 
York unless he brought with him a female companion, 
a sister, a wife, still a large percentage of the people 
would have to go down into their graves unmarried. 
More males are born than females. Casting ofi" the 
German and Irish quota, there would still be four men 
in the hundred in this great Republic for whom nature 
has sent no female mates. Immigration only comes to 
the help of nature; Europe sending in hosts of bache- 
lors to fight for the few women, who would otherwise 
be insufiicient for the native men. In the whole mass 
of whites, the disproportion is five in the hundred ; so 
that one man in every twenty males born in the 
23 



266 NEW AMERICA. 

United States can never expect to have a wife of his 
own. 

What is hardly less strange than this large displace- 
ment of the sexes among the white population, is the 
fact that it is not explained and corrected by any excess 
in the inferior types. There are more yellow men than 
yellow women, more red braves than red squaws. Only 
the negroes are of nearly equal number; a slight excess 
being counted on the female side. 

Very few Tartars and Chinese have brought their 
wives and daughters with them into this country. On 
their first coming over they expected to get rich in a 
year, and return to sip tea and grow oranges in their 
native land. Many of those who are now settled in 
California and Montana, are sending foi^their mates, 
who may come or not; having mostly, perhaps, been 
married again in the absence of their lords. The 
present rate is eighteen yellow men to one yellow 
woman. 

As yet, the red-skins have been counted in groups 
and patches only; in the more settled districts of 
Michigan, Minnesota, California, and New Mexico; 
but in all these districts, though the influences are 
here unusually favorable to female life, males are 
found in excess of females, in the proportion of five to 
four. 

Think what this large excess of men over women 
entails, in the way of trial, on American society — 
think what a state that country must be in which 
counts up in its fields, in its cities, seven hundred and 
thirty thousand unmarried men ! 

Bear in mind that these crowds of prosperous fellows 
are not bachelors by choice, selfish dogs, woman-haters, 
men useless to themselves and to the world in which 
they live. They are average young men, busy and 



SEX AND SEX. _ 267 

pushing; fellows who would rather fall into love than 
into sin; who would be fond of their wives and proud 
of their children if society would only provide them 
with lawful mates. What are they now? An army of 
monks without the defense of a religious vow. These 
seven hundred and thirty thousand bachelors have never 
promised to be chaste; many of them, it may be feared, 
regard the tenth commandment as little more than 
a paper law. You say to them in effect, "You are not 
to pluck these flowers, not to trample on these borders, 
if you please." Suppose that they will not please? 
How is the unwedded youth to be hindered from 
coveting his neighbor's wife? You know what ISTaples 
is, what Munich is. You have seen the condition of 
Liverpool, Cadiz, Antwerp, Livorno; of every city, of 
every port, in which there is a floating population of 
single men; but in which of these cities do you find 
any approach to Kew York, in the show of open and 
triumphant vice ? 

Men who know New York far worse than myself, 
assure me that in depth and darkness of iniquity, 
neither Paris in its private haunts, nor London in its 
open streets, can hold a candle to it. Paris may be 
subtler, London may be grosser, in its vices; but for 
largeness of depravity, for domineering insolence of 
sin, for rowdy callousness to censure, they tell me the 
Atliintic City finds no rival on the earth. 

Do all these evils come with the anchoring ship, and 
stream from the quays into the city? ISTo one will say 
so. The quays of New York are like the quays of any 
other port. They are the haunts of drabs and thieves; 
they are covered with grogshops and stews; but the 
men who land on those quays are not viler in taste 
than those who land in Southampton, in Hamburg, in 
Genoa. What, then, makes the Empire City a cess- 



268 NEW AMERICA. 

pool by the side of which European ports seem almost 
pure ? My answer is, mainly the disparity of sex and 
sex. 

'New York is a great capital; rich and pleasant, gay 
and luxurious; a city of freedom, a city of pleasure, to 
which men come from every part of the Union ; this 
man for trade, that for counsel, a third for relaxation, 
a fourth for adventure. It is a place for the idle man, 
as well as for the busy man. Crowds flock to its hotels, 
to its theaters, to its gaming-houses; and we need no 
angel from heaven to tell us what kind of company 
will amuse an unmarried man having dollars in his 
purse. 

On the other side, this demand for mates who can 
never be supplied, not in one place only, but in every 
place alike, aft'ects the female mind with a variety of 
plagues; driving your sister into a thousand restless 
agitations about her rights and powers; into debating 
woman's era in history, woman's place in creation, 
woman's mission in the family; into public hysteria, into 
table-rapping, into anti-wedlock societies, into theories 
about free love, natural marriage, and artistic mater- 
nity; into anti-offspring resolutions, into sectarian 
polygamy, into free trade of the affections, into com- 
munity of wives. Some part of this wild disturbance 
of the female mind, it may be urged, is due to the free- 
dom and prosperity which women find in America as 
compared against what they enjoy in Europe; but this 
freedom, this prosperity, are in some degree, at least, 
the consequences of that disparity in numbers which 
makes the hand of every young girl in the United 
States a positive prize. 



LADIES. 269 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



"The American lady has not made an American 
home," says sly old Mayo; a truth which I should 
hardly have found out, had I not met with it in an 
American author. Ladies, it is true, are very much at 
home in hotels; but I have only to remember certain 
streets in Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond, and New- 
York — indeed, in Denver, Salt Lake City, and St. 
Louis — to feel that America has homes as bright as 
any to be found in Middlesex and Kent. "What do 
you say, now, to our ladies?" said to me a bluff 
Yankee, as we sat last night under the veranda, here 
in the hotel at Saratoga. "Charming," of course I 
answered, "pale, delicate, bewitching; dashing, too, 
and radiant." "Hoo!" cried he, putting up his 

hands; "they are just not worth a d . They 

can't walk, they can't ride, they can't nurse." "Ah, 
you have no wife," said I, in a soothing tone. "A 
wife!" he shouted; "I should kill her." "With 
kindness?" "Ugh!" he answered; "with a poker. 
Look at these chits here, dawdling by the fountain. 
What are they doing now ? what have they done all 
day? Fed and dressed. They have changed their 
clothes three times, and had their hair washed, combed, 
and curled three times. That is their life. Have they 
been out for a walk, for a ride ? Have they read a 
book ? have they sewn a seam ? jSTot a bit of it. How 
do your ladies spend their time ? They put on good 
23* 



270 NEW AMEBIC A. 

boots, they tuck up their skirts, and hark away through 
the country lanes. I was in Hampshire once ; my host 
was a duke ; his wife was out before breakfast, with 
clogs on her feet and roses on her cheeks ; she rode to 
the hunt, she walked to the copse ; a ditch would not 
frighten her, a hedge would not turn her back. T.'liy, 

our women, poor, pale ." "Come," I said, "they 

are very lovely." "Ugh!" said the saucy fellow, 
"they have no bone, no fibre, no juice; they have 
only nerves; but what can you expect? They eat 
pearlash for bread ; they drink ice-water for wine ; 
they wear tight stays, thin shoes, and barrel skirts. 
Sucli things are not fit to live, and, thank God, in a 
hundred years not one of their descendants will be 
left alive." 

When looking at these sweet New England girls, as 
they go trooping past my window, I cannot help feel- 
ing that with this delicate pallor, winsome and poetic 
as it looks to an artist in female beauty, there must be 
lack of vital power. My saucy friend had got an ink- 
ling of the truth. Would that these dainty cousins of 
ours were a trifle more robust! I could forgive them 
for a little rose-blush on the cheek ; at present you can 
hardly speak to them without fearing lest they should 
vanish from before your face. 

Woman, in her time, has been called upon to endure 
a great deal of definition. In prose and in verse she 
has been called an angel, a harpy, a saint, an ogress, a 
guardian, a fate ; she has been likened to a rose and a 
palm, to the nightshade and the upas; she has been 
painted as a dove and a gazelle, a magpie and a fox. 
Poetry has made her a fawn, a nightingale, a swan ; while 
satire has represented her as a jay, a serpent, and a cat. 
By way of coming to a middle term, a wit described 
her as a good idea — spoiled! Wit, poetry, satire, only 



LADIES. 271 

exhaust their terms ; for how can a phrase describe au 
iufinite variety? 

A lady, as a single type, would, perhaps, be easier 
to define than woman ; she would certainly be easier 
to express by an example. Asked to produce a perfect 
woman, I might hesitate long, comparing strength and 
weakness, merit and frailty, so as to get them in the 
most subtle relations to each other; asked to produce 
a perfect lady, I should point to Miss Stars at Wash- 
ington, Mrs. Bars of Boston, and to many more. Not 
that perfect ladies are more common than perfect wo- 
men ; they are far less common ; but we seize the type 
more easily, and we know in what soils to expect their 
growth. A typical woman is a triumph of Nature ; a 
typical lady is a triumph of Art. 

Among the higher classes in America, the traditions 
of English beauty have not declined; the oval face, 
the delicate lip, the transparent nostril, the pearl-like 
flesh, the tiny hand, which mark in May Fair the lady 
of high descent, may be seen in all the best houses of 
Virginia and Massachusetts. The proudest London 
belle, the fixirest Lancashire witch, would find in Bos- 
ton and in Richmond rivals in grace and beauty whom 
she could not feign to despise. Birth is one cause, no 
doubt, though training and prosperity have come in 
aid of birth. In some of our older colonies, the people 
drew their ])lood from the very heart of England in 
her most heroic time and mood, when men who were 
born of gentle mothers flung themselves into the great 
adventure for establishing New States. The bands 
who came out under Raleigh's patent, under Brew- 
ster's guidance, were made up of soldiers, preachers, 
courtiers, gentlemen ; some coming hither to seek a 
fortune, others to find an asylum ; and though crowds 
of less noble emigrants followed after them — farmers, 



272 NEW AMERICA. 

craftsmen, menials, moss-troopers, even criminals — the 
leaven was not wholly lost. The family names re- 
mained. Even now this older race of settlers keeps its 
force in some degree intact, making the women lovely, 
the men gallant and enduring, in the fashion of their 
ancient types. This higher range of female beauty, 
which is chiefly to be found in the older cities and in 
families of gentle race, is thoroughly English in its 
style ; reminding the stranger of a gallery of portraits 
in a country house ; here of Holbein and Lely, there 
of Gainsborough and Re^-nolds. Leslie, I think, 
brought some of his sweetest English faces from the 
United States. 

In many of the younger cities of the Union, there is 
also a great deal of beauty, backed by a good deal of 
wit and accomplishment ; but the beauty of these 
younger cities (at least that sample of it which I see 
here in Saratoga, and that which I saw a little while 
ago at Lebanon springs) is less like the art of Gains- 
borough and of Reynolds than that of Guido and of 
Greuse. Much Flemish blood is in it. The skin is 
fairer, the eye bluer, the expression bolder, than they 
are in the English type. ISTew York beauty has more 
dash and color; Boston beauty more sparkle and deli- 
cacy. Some men would prefer the more open and 
audacious loveliness of New York, with the Rubens- 
like rosiness and fullness of the flesh ; but an English 
eye will And more charm in the soft and shy expres- 
sion of the elder type. In E'ew York, the living is 
more splendid, the dressing more costly, the furnish- 
ing more lavish, than in New England; but the efiect 
of this magnificence, as an educating agent, is found 
to be rather upon the eye than upon the soul. May I 
illustrate my meaning by example? In Fifth Avenue 
you may find a mansion which has cost more money 



LADIES. 273 

to build than Bridgewater House in London, and in 
which the wines and viands served to a guest may be 
as good as any put on an English board, but an Amer- 
ican would be the first to feel how wide an interval 
separated these two houses. One house belongs to 
wealth ; the other, to poetry. One boasts of having 
marble columns and gilded walls ; the other, of pos- 
sessing Raphael paintings and Shakspeare quartos. 
In Fifth Avenue there is a palace; in Cleveland liow 
there is a shrine. 

Some of this difference is what I find (or fancy) be- 
tween the beauties of Boston and Richmond and those 
of Washington and New York. Of course, I am not 
speaking of shoddy queens and petroleum empresses; 
these ladies make a class apart, who, even when they 
chance to live in Fifth Avenue, have no other relation 
to it than that of being there, like the hickories and 
limes. I speak of the real ladies of New York, wo- 
men who would be accounted ladies in Hyde Park, 
when I say that, as a rule, they have a style and bear- 
ing, a dash, a frankness, a confidence, not to be seen 
among their sisters of either New England or Old 
England. "I was very bad upon him ; but I got over 
it in time, and then let him off"," said a young and 
pretty woman of New York to a friend of mine, speak- 
ing of her love affairs, in the secrecy of a friendship 
which had lasted two long days. By Afm, she meant a 
swain whom she, in the wisdom of sixteen summers, 
had chosen from the crowd — one whom, if the whim 
had only held her a trifle longer, she might have made 
her husband by lawful rites. The girl was not a brazen 
minx, such as a man may sometimes see in a train, in 
a river boat, playing with big words and putting on 
saucy airs, but a sweet and elegant girl, a lady from 
brow to instep, with a fine carriage, a low voice, a cul- 



274 NEW A3IERTCA. 

tured mind ; a piece of feminine grace, such as a man 
would like to have in a sister and strive to compass in 
a wife. Her oddity consisted, first, in the thing which 
she said ; next, in her choice of words ; in other phrase, 
it lay in the difference between an English girl's and 
an American girl's habits of thought with regard to 
the relations of men and women. "I was bad upon 
him, but I let him off," expresses, in very plain Saxon 
words, an idea which would hardly have entered into 
an English girl's mind, and, even if it had so entered, 
would never have found that dry and passionless escape 
from her lips. 

In that phrase lay hidden, like a pass-word in a com- 
mon saying, the cardinal secrets of American life : the 
scarcity of women in the matrimonial market, and the 
power of choosing and rejecting which that scarcity 
confers on a young and pretty girl. 



CHAPTER XXXVHI. 

SQUATTER WOMEN. 

The fruits of this excess of males over females in the 
American market are not confined to young damsels 
who flirt and pout in Saratoga, in I^ewport, and at the 
Falls; they come in equal harvests to the peasant girls 
of Omaha, St. Joseph, and Leavenworth. In the west- 
ern country, the excess of males is greater than it is 
in the eastern, with advantages to match on the part 
of our fairer sex. 

Among the many points of difference between life in 



SQUATTER WOMEN. 275 

the Old World and life in the New, none comes more 
vividly to the eye than the daily contrast between the 
gait, dress, speech, and occupations of females in the 
lower ranks. If Fifth Avenue is a paradise for women, 
so, each in its own degree, is the mill, the ranch, the 
oil-spring, the rice-field, and the farm-yard. 

I am old enough to recall with a smile my boylike 
indignation when I first saw females laboring in the 
open countrj''; not with the men, their fathers and 
sweethearts, as they might do for a day of haymaking 
in my own Yorkshire ; but alone on the hillsides, in 
gangs and parties, gaunt and wasted things, ill-clad, 
ill-fed, pallid with toil, and scorched by the sun. This 
trial happened to me in beautiful Burgundy, on the 
slopes of sweet Tonnerre, to whiah I had gone in the 
heyday of youth, full of dreams and pastorals. Good 
old Josephine, poor little Fan, how my heart used to 
ache for you, as you trotted ofi:' in the early day, in 
your old flap hats, your thin calico skirts, and thick 
wooden clogs, with the rakes and hoes in your hands, 
the jar of fresh water on your heads, the basket of 
brown bread and onions on your arms, leaving that 
lazy old Jean, who called one of you wife, the other 
of you daughter, asleep in his crib ! How my fingers 
used to twitch and claw the air when, later in the day, 
the rascal would come out into the street, shake 
himself into good humor, gabble about the news, play 
his game of dominoes at the estaminet door, and enjoy 
his pipe of tobacco on the steps of St. Pierre ! Since 
that boyish day, I have seen the feminine serfs at their 
field-work in many parts of the earth; the Celt in Con- 
naught, the Iberian in Valentia, the Pawnee in Colo- 
rado, the Fellaheen in Egypt, the Valack in the Carpa- 
thian mountains, the Walloon in Flanders, the Negress 
in Kentucky; but I have never yet been able to look 



276 NEW AMERICA. 

down on this grinding and defacing toil without flush- 
ing veins. After so much waste, it was rather comical 
to find Loo Sing making beds and Hop Chang washing 
clothes. 

Li my own country, the peasant girl is not every- 
thing that poets and artists paint her. In spite of our 
Mayday games, our harvest-homes, and many other 
country pastimes, relics of an older and a merrier age, 
the English peasant girl is a little loutish, not a little 
dull. As a rule, she is not very tidy in her person, 
not very neat in her dress, not very quick with her 
fingers, not very gainly on her feet. The American 
girl of the same rank in life is in every respect, save 
one, her superior. 

It may come from living in a softer climate, from 
feeding on a different diet, from inheriting a purer 
blood; but from whatever cause it springs, there can 
be no dispute about the fact, that in Lancashire and 
Devonshire, indeed, in every English shire, you find 
among the peasant women a degree of personal beauty 
nowhere to be matched, as a general rule, and on a 
-scale for comparison, in the United States. Many 
American girls are comely, many more are smart; but 
among the lower grades of women, there is no such 
wide and plentiful crop of rustic loveliness as an artist 
finds in England; the bright eyes, the curly locks, the 
rosy complexions, everywhere laughing you into 
pleasant thoughts among our Devonshire lanes and 
Lancashire streets. But then comes the balance of ac- 
counts. With her gifts of nature, our English rustic 
must close her book, in presence of her keen and natty 
American sister. 

A few weeks ago, I rode out with a friend to see 
Cyrus Smith, a peasant farmer, living in the neighbor- 
hood of Omaha. Omaha is a new city, built on the 



SQUATTER WOMEN. 277 

Missouri ; a place that has sprung into life in a dozen 
years; and is growing up like a city in a fairy tale. 
Yesterday it had a hundred settlers, to-day it has a 
thousand, to-morrow it may have ten thousand. Twenty 
years ago, the Omaha Indians lodged under its wil- 
lovvs, and the king of that tribe was buried on horse- 
back, by the adjacent bank. Now, it is a city, with a 
railway line, a capital, a court-house, streets, banks, 
omnibuses, hotels. What Chicago is, Omaha threat- 
ens to become. 

Cyrus Smith is a small squatter, living near a tiny 
creek, in a log-hut, on a patch of forest land, which he 
has wrung from nature by the toil of his hand, the 
sweat of his brow. The shed is not big, the plot of 
land is not wide. Within a narrow compass, every- 
thing needful in the way of growing stuft' and rearing 
stock, for a family of young children, must be done; 
cows must be stalled, pigs littered, poultry fed. There 
is no wealth to spare in Smith's ranch; the fare is 
hard, the living is only from hand to mouth ; yet on 
the face of affairs, there is no black sign of poverty, 
of meanness, such as you would see about an Irish 
hovel, a Breton cabin, a Valack den. Walk up this 
garden way, through these natty little beds of fruit- 
trees, herbs, and flowers. This path might lead to a 
gentleman's villa; for the road is wide and swept, and 
neither sink nor cesspool, as in Europe, offends the eye. 
Things appear to have fallen into their proper places. 
The shed, if rough, is strong and snug; a rose, a ja- 
ponica, a Virginia creeper, climbing round the door. 
Inside, the house is so scrupulously clean, that you 
might eat your lunch as comfortably off its bare planks 
as you could from the shining tiles of a Dutch floor. 
The shelves are many, the pots and pans are bright. 
Something like an air of gentle life is about you; as 
24 



278 NEW AMU RICA. 

though a family of position, suddenly thrown upon its 
own resources, had camped out in the prairie, halting 
for a season on its march. In the little parlor, there is 
a vase of flowers, a print, a bust of Washington. You 
see at one glance that there is a bright and wholesome 
woman in this house. 

Annie Smith is the type of a class of women found 
in America — and in some parts of England — but no- 
where else. In station she is little above a peasant; in 
feeling she is little below a lady. She has a thousand 
tasks to perform : to light her fires, to wash and dress 
her children, to scrub her floor, to feed her pigs and 
fowls, to milk her cows, to fetch in herbs and fruits, to 
dress and cook the dinners, to scour and polish her 
pails and pans, to churn her butter and press her 
cheese, to make and mend the clothes; but she laughs 
and sings through these daily toils with such a gay 
humor, such a perfect taste, such an easy compliance, 
that her work seems like pleasure and her care like 
pastime. She is neatly dressed; beyond, as an English- 
man might think, her station in life, were it not that 
she wears her clothes with a perfect grace. Her hands 
feel soft as though they were cased all day in kid. Her 
manner is easy, her countenance bright. Her idiom, 
being that of her class, amuses a stranger by its un- 
conscious sauciuess of tone. But her voice is sweet 
and low, as becomes her sex, when her sex is at its 
best. Oddities of expression you will hear from her 
lips, profanities never. Dirt is her enemy; and her 
sense of decency keeps the whole homestead clean. 
She rises with the sun, oftentimes before the sun; her 
beds are spotless, her curtains and hangings like falling 
snow. A Sicilian crib, with sheets unwashed for a year, 
is a thing beyond her imagination to conceive. ISTo 
herding with the kine, no sleeping in the stable, so 



SQUATTER WOMEN. 279 

common in France, in Italy, in Spain, is ever allowed 
to her son, to her servant, by Annie Smith. A Kentish 
barn in hop-time, a Caithness bothy in hay-time, would 
appear in her eyes to be the abomination of abomina- 
tions. Her chicks, her pigs, her cattle, are all penned 
up in their roosts, their styles, their sheds. A Munster 
peasant puts his pig under the bed, a Navarrese mule- 
teer yokes his team in the house, an Epirote herdsman 
feeds his goats in the ingle, and an Egyptian fellah 
takes his donkey into his room. But these dirty and 
indecent habits of the poor people in our lazy Old 
"World are not only unknown but incomprehensible 
to American women of the grade of Annie Smith. 

Another thing about her takes the eye ; the quality 
of her everyday attire. In England, our female rustics, 
from the habit of going to church on Sundays, have 
caught the custom of dressing themselves in better 
clothes on one day of the week than on the other six 
days. They have, in fact, their Sunday gowns, com- 
pared with which their ordinary wear is nothing but 
mops and rags. In these respects their sisters in Italy 
and France resemble them; the contadina having her 
festa boddice, the paysanne her saint's-day cap. The 
Suffolk farmer's wife, whom you see coming out of 
church to-day, her face bright with soap, her bonnet 
gay with ribbon, has no objection to be seen by you 
again to-morrow, grimy with dirt, and arrayed in 
patches. ISTot so in America; where Annie thinks it 
would be in bad taste for her to dress gaudily one day, 
and shabbily six days. True economy, she says, makes 
her dress herself cleanly and nattily, even when the 
materials of her gown are poor. One good suit is 
cheaper than two suits, though one of them may be 
coarse in texture and mean in make. Good dressing 
is a habit of the mind, not a question of the purse. 



280 NEW AMEBIC A. 

Any woman with a needle in her hand may be tidily 
dressed. 

All round Smith's holding near Omaha lies a colony 
of bachelors; four men out of five in this territory 
being without a wife. Annie feels some influence 
from the common fact; her house is a pleasant center 
for the young; and as bachelors are apt to grow untidy 
in their ranches, she finds it pleasant fun to suggest 
without words the blessings which accrue to a man 
who is lucky enough to procure a wife. 

How sad to think that every man who may deserve 
it cannot win the prize ! 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

FEMININE POLITICS. 

If all that I hear from the female politicians of these 
l^ew England States — particularly from those of beau- 
tiful Burlington — be true, the great reform coming 
forward in the United States is a moral and social 
change ; a reform of thought even more than of society; 
a change in the relations of man to woman, which is 
not unlikely to write the story of its progress on every 
aspect of domestic life. 

Compared with such a revolution, all other issues 
of right and wrong — bases of representation, negro 
sufirage, reconstruction. State rights, repudiation, and 
the like — are but the topics of a day, trifles of the 
vestry, accidents of time and place, in two words, 
parish politics. Domestic reform, when it comes at 



FEMININE POLITICS. 281 

all, must be wide iu scope, grave in principle. The 
question now on trial in the United States is said by 
these female advocates of Equal Rights to be, in effect, 
neither more nor less than this: Shall our family life 
be governed in the future of our race by Christian law 
or by Pagan law ? 

We have had an old saying among us, that "a clever 
woman can make any man she pleases propose to 
marry her;" and this London phrase, I am told, has 
been very much the New York fact. 

In the face of our surplus million of spinsters, the 
saying is a pleasantry, as you may see at any crush- 
room, kettle-drum, and croquet party. Who does not 
know a hundred clever women, among the brightest 
of their sex, who are dropping down the stream, unbid- 
den to the church upon its banks ? If that saying about 
a clever woman being able to marry whom she pleased, 
were true, should we always hear it with a smile? 
"Who would risk meeting those clever women? " Come 
now, and bring the lady that owns you," were Lady 
Morgan's coquetting words to a friend whom she was 
coaxing to drop in upon one of her morning concerts. 
Yet the brilliant Irish lady wrote, that in all ages, in 
all climates, w^omen have behaved like saints, and been 
treated like serfs. It is not a female saying, that a 
woman can marry any one she likes. 

"Woman and her Master" gave a voice to that cry 
of the female heart, which has led London into found- 
ing a Ladies' College in a side street, a Ladies' Club 
over a pastry-cook's shop; which has helped ISTew 
York into calling congresses of maids and matrons 
on love, marriage, divorce, with the kindred topics of 
natural selection, artistic maternity, and the mediatorial 
privilege of the sex. 

It must be owned, that as yet our own female poli- 
24** 



282 NEW AMEBIC A. 

ticians have made but puny efforts to free themselves 
from the bonds of law. With us, Reform has' to wait 
on times and seasons. In English society, the mascu- 
line mind still bears the bell, and the most daring of 
her sex cannot hope, when she lays her hand on our 
forms and canons, to have the laughter on her side. 
She knows it will be against her. iS'ot so her American 
sister; come what may, the Vermont heroine, the JS^ew 
Hampshire reformer, has no dread of being baffled by 
a sneer. Mary Cragin may renounce her marriage 
vows, Anna Dickenson may mount the platform, Mary 
"Walker may put on pantalettes. What do they care 
for men's jests and gibes? Young girls being now in 
brisk demand, women are free from all fear of misad- 
venture and neglect, even though they should presume 
to look the great question of their destinies in the face. 
Prudence of the trading sort having no part in what 
these ladies may say and do, they are free to think of 
what is right in fact, of what is sound in law; to come 
together in public, to teach and preach, to defy the 
world, and to hold a parliament of their own. Why 
should they not? K men may meet in public to dis- 
cuss affairs, why may not women? Are parish politics 
more important to a people than domestic politics? 

No man with eyes and heart will say that everything 
in relation to our home affairs has yet been placed on 
a perfect footing — that justice everywhere reigns by 
the side of love — that behind the closed door, the cur- 
tained window, all the relations of husband and wife, 
of parent and child, are tempered and ennobled by a 
Christian spirit. If this cannot be said, with even a 
show of truth, then we have failed as yet to plant on 
our hearths the religion of love. And if we have failed 
in our attempt after a Christian life, why may not the 
reasons of our failure be asked in. a public place, in 



FEMININE POLITICS. 283 

presence of those whom it concerns? But whether 
men may think it right or wrong to put such queries, 
American damsels have begun to think, to write, and 
to vote upon them. Domestic life is said to be woman's 
sphere; domestic reform, then, is feminine work. 
Some of these Vermont politicians have got far beyond 
writing and voting on domestic love. Oneida Creek 
and Salt Lake City — communities founded by Vermont 
men — are practical replies to the one great question 
of our day, — What shall be done to reform the abuses 
of our social and domestic life? 

All the ladies who have entered these lists in favor 
of their sex — who have begun to preach and write on 
woman's place in the household, on equality of male 
and female, on free trade in love, on slavery in mar- 
riage, on the right of divorce, on sexual resurrection — 
whether they lift up their voices with a Margaret Fuller 
at Brook Farm, a Mary Cragin at Oneida Creek, an 
Antoinette Doolittle at Mount Lebanon, a Belinda 
Pratt in Salt Lake City, an Eliza Farnham of New 
York — have gone back, in these debates, to the very 
first of First Principles: the absence of all guiding 
light, of all settled law, even of all safe tradition on the 
subject of domestic life, compelling them, in search of 
evidence, to question books, to waylay facts, to criticise 
codes. These ladies have entered on their task with 
spirit. ]^o sphere has been too high, no abyss has 
been too deep, for their prying eyes. They have 
soared to Olympus, they have plunged into Hades, 
in search of examples of the actual working of a law 
of love. They have turned to Syria and to Egypt, to 
Athens and to Rome; they have appealed to nature 
and to art, to poetry and to science; they have disputed 
the story of Eve, denied the wisdom of Lycurgus, in- 
vaded the seclusion of Sarah's tent. From every 



284 NEW AAIERICA. 

country they have sought an argument, a warning, a 
reproof. They have gone down to the threshing-floor 
with lluth, they have read the story of Aspasia, they 
have dwelt on the fate of Lucretia, they have invoked 
the spirit of Jane Grey. In every land they have 
found a model and a moral; and though the model 
may vary with woman's height, and color, and educa- 
tion, the moral is said to be everywhere the same. 
Until the new era — which their newest prophetess, 
Eliza Farnham, has been good enough to describe 
as Woman's Era — dawned upon the sex in America, 
they have found that the female had been treated by 
the male, sometimes as a toy, often as a victim, gen- 
erally as a chattel, always as a slave. Where, they 
ask, in glancing through the story of our race, can a 
woman's eye find anything to admire? Let her pass 
into an Arab harem, into a Hindoo zenana, into a 
Kaffir krall, into a Xew York hotel, into a Pawnee 
wigwam, into a Mayfair house, and what will she find 
in these female cages? Equality of the sexes, freedom 
of the affections? Nowhere. East and west, north 
and south, she will find little more than government 
by the strong. As regards higher principles of order, 
she will see alike in the Christian house and in the 
heathen cave, the same confusion of ideas, the same 
difference of laws — the greatest confusion, the wildest 
divergence, being found, it is alleged by some, in the 
United States. 

In no country under heaven, say these female re- 
formers of domestic life, is the woman held equal to 
the man. An Arab is allowed to marry four wives; a 
Jew gives daily thanks that he was born a man; a 
Persian doubts, in spite of the Koran, whether his 
concubine has an^^ soul. Baron and feme, the lord 



FEMININE POLITICS. 285 

and his woman, are the rough old English names of 
husband and wife. In America, in the midst of liberty 
and light, the station of woman has hardly been im- 
proved — if she measures the improvements by Christian 
lengths. At Onondaga, in New York, the principal 
people have petitioned the legislature in favor of abol- 
ishing all the laws against seduction. Even in Boston, 
in Philadelphia, in New York, the most refined, the 
most wealthy societies of America, her position, say 
these female politicians, is little better than it is among 
the Perfectionists and Mormons, even when she has 
given herself to the man of her choice. See what she 
has to yield! She must give up to him her name; she 
must cease to be a citizen; she must transfer to him 
her house and land ; she must sink herself in her new 
lord. What more does the negress yield on being sold 
as a slave ? In legal jargon, the married lady becomes 
a feme covert ; a creature to be treated as an infant, 
who can hardly do either right or wrong; a change 
which, while shielding her on one side, robs her on the 
other of all her natural rights. No court, no canon, no 
society, does the woman justice. What is a wedding- 
ring but a badge? What is a harem but a prison? 
What is a house but a cage ? Why should man have 
the court, the camp, the grove, while woman has only 
love? Why should not girls aspire to shine in the 
senate, to minister in the church? Why may not 
Elizabeth Stanton represent New York in Congress? 
Why should not Olympia Brown have the charge of 
souls at Weymouth? Must women be condemned for- 
ever to suckle fools and chronicle small beer? Such 
ladies as Lucy rftone and Mary Walker put these 
queries to the world, while an army of wives and 
maidens waits for its reply. 



286 NEW AMEBIC A. 

The very names which the two sexes use toward 
each other in wedlock imply, it is alleged, the rela- 
tions of lord and slave. Husband means master; wife 
means servant. In many parts of America, as in 
England north of the Trent, a woman of the lower 
classes never speaks of her husband otherwise than as 
her "master;" and a husband of the same parts, in 
the same class, would never talk of his wife except as 
his "woman;" when he would let you see that he pets 
her, as his " little woman," Are these relations, ask 
indignant Eliza Farnham, persuasive Caroline Dall, to 
be the lasting bases of the married state in a free, a 
pacitic, and a religious land? 

No other topic ever did, no other topic ever will, ex- 
cite in the human breast so keen a curiosity as the 
relations of man to woman, of woman to man ; two 
bright and plastic beings, unlike in form, in genius, 
and in office ; yet linked by nature in the strongest 
bonds ; fated, as the case may be, to make each other 
either supremely wretched or supremely blest. Society 
is the fruit of these relations. Law is but a name for 
the order in which they exist. Poetry is their audible 
voice. All epics, tragedies, and stories rest upon them, 
as the fountains of our nobler and our finer passions. 
From these relations spring our highest love and our 
sternest hate. Minor dramas play themselves out. 
Simpler problems get themselves solved. To wit : the 
rules which govern the relations of man with man — 
whether as prince and subject, priest and laic, father 
and son, creditor and debtor, master and slave — are 
found to have been obeying for ages a certain law of 
growth, which has been softening them, until the old, 
harsh spirit of pagan law has been all but wholly cast 
out of our daily life. Is it the same with those rules 



FEMININE POLITICS. 287 

which govern the more delicate relations of man with 
woman? In no very large degree. 

Is it not a sad, surprising fact, that in the nineteenth 
century of gospel light, the laws under which women 
are compelled to live in wedlock should be worse in 
America than they are in Asia ? In Turkey, marriage 
makes a bond woman free; in the United States (if we 
believe these champions of Equal Rights), it turns a free 
woman into a slave. In the East, polygamy is dying 
out ; the only quarter in which it is being revived is 
the West. 

Is it true that our domestic affections lie beyond the 
sphere of law? Men like John H. Noyes, women like 
Harriet Holton, say so boldly; and at Wallingford and 
Oneida Creek, the sexes have deposed all human codes 
and agreed to live with each other by the light of grace. 
But this opinion, with the practice which depends upon 
it, is the fancy of a small, though an active and seducing 
school. The world thinks otherwise; for the world be- 
lieves in a law of God, even though it may have ceased 
to confide in a law of man. 



288 NEW AMERICA. 

CHAPTER XL. 

HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 

About the main facts which lie at the root of this 
feminine discontent with existing rules, there is hardly 
any debate among men of sense. All who have eyes 
to see, admit them. When you enter upon a study 
of that nameless science, so often in our thoughts, 
which may be called the Comparative Anatomy of 
Domestic Life, you are certainly met on the threshold 
of inquiry by the astounding fact, that the rights of 
woman in wedlock would seem to have had scarcely 
any connection with the scheme of Christian progress. 
All other rights appear to increase with time. The 
subject wins concessions from his prince ; the layman 
rises to the level of his priest ; the child obtains pro- 
tection against his sire ; the debtor secures some jus- 
tice from his creditor; the slave is freed from his 
owner ; but hardly any change in her condition, hardly 
any improvement in her standing, comes to the wedded 
wife. As a mere chattel, a damsel may be safe ; as a 
wedded wife, the mistress of a home, the law takes 
hardly any note of her existence ; even after all the 
changes wrought by a dozen years of reform, the law 
may be described as almost blind to her sufferings, 
deaf and dumb to her appeals. 

When you compare the relations of man with man, 
and of man with woman, in Asia and America, you 
are struck at every turn by unsuspected contrasts. 
Whether you look on man as a citizen, as a laic, as a 
son, as a debtor, as a servant, you find him better 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 289 

placed before the law in America than in Asia. Could 
a fellah in Damascus dare to say in a rich man's pres- 
ence, "I am as good as you? " Could the ryot of 
Luckuow answer to his lord, "Go to, my vote is as 
good as yours, and I will not serve you ? " Would not 
such an offender be dispatched to the gateway and 
punished with twenty stripes ? But is there any such 
difference between Damascus and Boston, between 
Lucknow and Philadelphia, in respect of the relation 
of man with woman ? Not at all. The contrast lies 
another way ; for in Turkey, in Persia, in Egypt, in 
Mohammedan India, the privileges of married women 
stand on a surer footing as to justice than they do in 
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York. If you 
doubt this fact, take down from your shelves the 
Hidayah, that legal code which an English lawyer has 
to administer in our Indian courts, and your doubts 
will pass away into quaint surprise. On opening the 
Hidayah, you will tind that the harem life, which 
many of those who have never seen it are content to 
picture as a drama of poisons, bowstrings, slaves, and 
eunuchs, is guarded and secured, so far as the females 
go, by a host of wise and compassionate rules, which 
are not to be broken with impunity by the stronger 
sex. Many persons here in Boston imagine that a 
harem is a jail, an Oriental wife a slave ; though a 
very slight acquaintance with Mohammedan law would 
show them that an English wife is far worse off as a 
woman than any of her swarthy sisters of Egypt and 
Bengal. 

In one short chapter of a dozen pages, Blackstone 
set down in his Commentaries all that he conld find 
in our books about the legal relations of an English 
husband to the woman whom he makes his wife. In 
the Hidayah (Arabic Commentaries) the chapters which 



290 NEW AMERICA. 

contain the rules defining the relations of a Moslem 
husband to his Moslem wife, are long enough to fill a 
volume. A ISTew England advocate of Equal Rights 
for the two sexes, would describe our English code — 
and after it the American code — as making a free 
woman into a serf by the machinery of a civil con- 
tract and a solemn right ; in some respects as worse 
than into a serf, since, by the mere act of marriage, 
it cancels all the rights to which she may have been 
born, takes away her family name, disposes of her 
goods and lands, and gives her person into the power 
of a man who maj^ squander her fortune and break 
her heart. How far would such a description by the 
New England advocate be unfair? Who does not 
know that such cases may be occurring in any town ? 
We need not look for examples in the divorce courts : 
— they meet us in these streets, they cry aloud to us 
from these balconies. Our common law gives up the 
wife so thoroughly into her husband's power, that a 
woman, who comes to the altar young, confiding, 
beautiful, and rich, may be compelled by brutal treat- 
ment, for which the law can give her no redress, to 
quit it, after a dozen years, an outraged woman with 
a ruined fortune and a wasted frame. One course, 
and one only, can save her from the risk of these 
evils: — a settlement made on her account with the 
law before she has entered on the fatal right. 

Nothing so gross and cruel towards a young and 
loving girl could happen in either Turkey, Persia, or 
Mohammedan India. In a Moslem country, every 
right which a female, whether rich or poor, enjoys by 
her birth, remains with her, a sacred property, to her 
death. No man can take it from her. After she has 
passed from her father's house into her husband's 
home, she is still a citizen, a proprietor, a human 



HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 291 

being. She can sue her debtors, and recover her own 
in the open courts. All the privileges which belong 
to her as a woman and as a wife are secured to her, 
not by the courtesies that come and go, but by actual 
text in the book of law. A Moslem marriage is a 
civil act, needing no mollah, asking no sacred phrase. 
Made before a judge, it may also be unmade before a 
judge. But the Eastern contract is in this respect 
more logical than the Western contract, that it gives 
to the man no power upon the woman's person beyond 
what the law defines, and none whatever upon her 
lands and goods. A Persian, a Turkish bride, being 
married to a man of her own rank and creed, retains 
in the new household which she enters to become the 
soul, her separate existence as her father's child, A 
New England bride, on being married to a man of her 
own rank and creed, becomes lost in him. A Turkish 
wife is an independent and responsible person, know- 
ing what is right and wrong, and with the same faculty 
of receiving and devising property which she held in 
her spinster days. What is hers is not her lord's. 
She may sue her debtor, without the concurrence of 
her nearest friend. She may receive a pension, sign 
a bond, execute a trust. Compared against her Asiatic 
sister, what a helpless being an American lady seems ! 
The very first lesson, then, to be drawn from this 
study of the Comparative Anatomy of Domestic Life, 
is that rules of law are not beyond some sort of fair 
and equal application, even in the midst of those 
secrecies which feed, and those sanctities which guard, 
the love of husband and wife. Such rules of law are 
found in Asia, They exist in Cairo, in Bagdad, in 
Delhi, in a hundred cities of the East. Our own 
magistrates have to take account of them in India; 
where the most intricate questions of domestic right, 



292 yEW AMEBIC A. 

— questions relating to dowry, to divorce, to prefer- 
ence, to maintenance, to conjugal fidelity, are brought 
before the courts, and require to be considered and 
decided on principles utterly unknown in Westminster 
Hall. In dealing with such cases between man and 
woman, we have to lay aside our Statutes at large, our 
civil law and common law; to forget our jargon of 
baron and feme, covert and sole. The Suras of Mo- 
hammed supply us with the principles, the Commen- 
taries of Abu Yusuf with the details, of a practicable 
Moslem code. Who, then, in the face of our large 
Indian experience, will be bold enough to say, that 
law cannot be made to reach the innermost recesses 
of a household ? In Delhi, in Lucknow, in Madras, 
not to speak of Cairo, of Damascus, of Jerusalem, 
law penetrates to the nursery and to the bridal cham- 
ber. Of course, there may be secret tyrannies in 
Asia, as there may be in America; violence of the 
strong against the weak may be fierce as the passion, 
subtle as the genius, of an Oriental race ; but the ex- 
cesses of a Moslem husband find no sanction either in 
the silence or in the provisions of his actual code. If 
he does wrong, he does it as wrong, and with the fear 
of punishment in his heart. When a man commits 
an abuse of the harem, however trifling, he knows 
that for the victim of his temper there is a swift and 
sure appeal to an impartial judge. 

But how, it may be asked, does a married woman 
come to have a higher security against oppression in 
an Asiatic city than in American cities ? Surely it 
cannot be because those Asiatic cities are Moslem in 
creed, while these American cities are Christian? 
Nothing in our Gospel makes a Christian wife a slave; 
and in its sweet tenderness to woman, the Gospel 
stands high above the Koran, high above every other 



DOMESTIC LAW. 293 

book. Why, then, is the law of Christendom so harsh 
to wedded women, while that of Islam appears to be 
80 mild ? 

This question goes deep down into the roots of 
things, and a full answer to it would supply the motto 
for that revolution which the female politicians declare 
to be coming upon American social life. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

DOMESTIC LAW. 

"When the New England seeker after better things 
than she can find just now in a woman's lot, turns 
aside, with her aching heart, from the wrongs of time 
towards the promise of a golden age of justice, in she 
knows not what new cities of Bethlehem, Wallingford, 
Lebanon, Salt Lake, the sites of her new experiments 
in living, no man will say that she is troubled without 
cause. Let her remedy be sought in the right place 
or in the wrong, the evil is dark and vast ; pervading 
the whole community, and passing in its degrees of 
shame, from the delicate tortures of the boudoir down 
to the rough brutalities of the street. Even here in 
Boston, with all its learning, all its refinement, all its 
piety, the wrongs of women are so gross, that Caroline 
Ball confessed to a female audience she could neither 
lay them bare nor speak of them by their proper 
names. Yet on all these suff'erings of the weaker 
sex, the American law is silent, the American magis- 
trate is powerless. How, ask the reformers, have 
these evils grown upon us? 
25* 



294 NEW AMERICA. 

Tliat prior question of how it has come to pass that 
a Turkish, Persian, Egyptian lady enjoys in marriage 
a securer state than her paler sister of Boston, Kich- 
mond, New Orleans, would open up for us a glimpse 
of some forgotten truths ; since it would start a second 
question, — How have we Christians come by our 
marriage laws, and how have the Mohammedan na- 
tions come by theirs? The answer is not far away; 
for the facts are written broadly in our histories, mi- 
nutely in our statutes. We get our marriage laws 
from the Pandects ; the Moslems get theirs from the 
Koran. In this dift'ereuce of origin lies the secret 
of their difference in tone and spirit. Our laws have 
a civil and commercial source ; theirs have a moral 
and religious source. 

Here, indeed, an inquirer strikes his axe upon the 
root. Our life is a divided duty : a moral life based 
on the Gospel, a family life based on the civil law. 
While our morals have their root in Christianity, our 
statutes have their root in Paganism. And thus it is, 
in the main degree at least, that woman's griefs in 
marriage, and in all the relations of sex and sex, have 
come upon her, like many other evils in our social 
body, from the fact of our deriving our morals from 
one source, the Gospels, our laws from another source, 
the Pandects, 

One of the sorry jests in which we are apt to array 
our falsehoods, says that our English and American 
codes of law are founded on the precepts of our faith. 
Let us try this dogma by a test. A just and pious 
man, fresh from his study of Holy Writ, shall walk 
with the Bible in his hand, into the Supreme Court of 
the United States, and shall then and there try to per- 
suade the presiding judge that the Sermon on the 
Mount is good American law, binding on every 



DOMESTIC LAW. 295 

follower of Christ. Have you any kind of doubt as to 
what would become of that just and pious man ? You 
know that the judge would pity, the advocate quiz, 
the audience mock, and the officer seize him. Re- 
move the scene from the Capitol at "Washington, to 
the gateway of Damascus. In the Oriental city, such 
a man might go before the cadi, Koran in hand, 
assured that his citations from the holy book would be 
heard ; and if his views of them were sound, that they 
would govern the verdict to be given. And the 
reason is plain. An Oriental has not two laws : one 
for the street, another for the gate ; one for his harem, 
a second for his mosque. His moral life and his civil 
life have one source, one end, and he finds no war 
between the teachings of his cadi and his priest. In 
Boston, in IsTew York, we have a moral code which 
only on two or three points of moment approaches the 
edge of our domestic code. What do our judges 
know of Christ, of Moses, and of Abraham ? As 
lawyers, nothing. These names are not among those 
which may be quoted in our acts and commentaries. 
The judges who dispense our law have heard of Jus- 
tinian, of the civilians ; but of the immutable precepts 
of our faith, the divine foundations of our moral life, 
they are powerless, as magistrates on the bench, to 
take any public and judicial note. They must abide 
by the text, a mixture of the Saxon common law and 
of the Roman civil law. 

A prime result of our laws being Pagan while our 
morals are Christian, is the fact, so strange and be- 
wildering to an Oriental, that, with us, the practice of 
virtue is regarded as a private affair, a thing between 
a man and his Maker only, not, as with the Moslems, 
between a man and his fellow. Thus, in Boston, in 
New York, no law compels a man to be chaste, com- 



296 NEW AMERICA. 

passionate, dutiful. One of those wits who speak 
truth in jests and parables, has said that, in our societ}^ 
a rich, unscrupulous sinner may contrive to break 
every commandment in the decalopjue, without losing 
his place either at good men's feasts or in ladies' 
cabinets. If he is great in evasion, pleasant in manner, 
choice in hospitality, he may run the whole round of 
offence, from following false gods to coveting his 
neighbor's wife. His only art is to avoid being seen 
by the police. Is that parable untrue ? What man 
who drives in Fifth Avenue, who walks on yon 
common, shuts his eyes on the world so far as to 
dream that our manners are all alike ? You need not 
be a cynic to see that fashion sits down to its meat 
and wine, day after day, year after year, with wretches 
who, in any part of Islam, would be taken before the 
cadi and beaten on the feet. With two exceptions, 
perhaps, a sinner may break the ten commandments 
openl}^, in these public streets, and no one shall lay 
hands upon him. While he refrains from killing his 
foe and robbing his friend, he is safe. What magis- 
trate on the bench would think of asking whether a 
man accused before him bowed to a false god, put 
away graven images from his house, abstained from 
the use of oaths, kept holy the Sabbath day, honored 
his father and mother, respected the purity of his 
neighbor's wife, drove out the sin of covetousness 
from his soul ? ISTot one. And why ? 

Because the magistrate in his office on the bench is 
the minister, not of our moral system, but of our civil 
code. 

The truth is, we English and Americans have 
hardly yet embraced Christianity as a scheme of life. 
We find our religion at church, and when we have 
sung our psalms and breathed our prayers, we go back 



DOMESTIC LAW. 297 

into the streets to be governed for another week by 
our pagan law. Our courts of justice have no authority 
to notice moral oifences, unless they happen to have 
been injurious to a fellow-citizen in either his peace or 
his purse. Mere lack of honor, virtue, reverence, 
goes on our bench for nothing. A wretch may curse 
his parents, may profane the Sabbath, may worship 
stocks and stones, without earning for himself the 
penalty of a stripe. The same wretch may break his 
wife's heart, may squander his child's estate, may 
destroy his friend's happiness, yet he shall escape all 
punishment of his crimes. Some of the darkest 
transgressions in the sight of God — the God whose 
will we obey — are treated by the code under which we 
live, as of no more moment than the whimsies of a 
child. Fornication is not condemned. Seduction is 
treated as a wrong done, not to the girl, who may be 
its victim, but only to the owner of her service. 
Adultery is classed with such small injuries as theft; 
a loss of property rather than of purity and credit ; 
and the man whose name may have been tarnished for- 
ever by a seducer, must plead against the destroyer of 
his peace, not his outraged honor, but the loss of his 
daughter's service, of his wife's society. In some of 
the United States, they have gone a little way towards 
rounding off these lines of separation between Chris- 
tian morals and the civil code. In ISew York, a fellow 
may be lodged in jail for seducing girls ; but the 
legislatures have hardly, as yet, even touched the 
fringe of a mighty evil. Those Onandago reformers 
of the law who petitioned in favor of replacing the 
felon's cell by a bridal wreath — going back to the 
prosaic plan of considering the act of seduction as an 
act of marriage — have no remedy to suggest for the 
still darker outrage of seducing and debauching a 



298 ^EW AMERICA. 

married woman. ISTor can they find one under a law 
which treats the crimes of seduction and adultery as a 
wrong to the man's estate, but not to his moral life. 

In all the advancing schools of American thought, 
this topic is discussed, the evil is admitted, a remedy 
is sought. At Oneida Creek they have put an end to 
adultery by abolishing marriage. At Mount Lebanon 
they have done the same thing by prohibiting love. 
At Salt Lake, again, they have checked the evil by 
punishing adultery with death. But these sectional 
trials leave the law intact, and the courts and legisla- 
tures of the Union are continually being vexed by 
petitions in favor of substituting some higher rule for 
the one in vogue. Will they ever find such a rule 
while they cling to the code of Justinian in preference 
to the word of God ? 

In a Moslem country, the Prophet's word is law, 
each line a command, each sura an institute. The 
Prophet's object being, according to his lights, to pro- 
mote among his people not only the public peace, but 
holy living; his precepts were adapted to the regula- 
tion of every act of a believer in the harem, in the 
mosque, in the bazaar. On the other side, our Saviour's 
word has only obtained in our western society the 
force of a moral precept, which every one may adopt, 
and every one may reject, at pleasure. 

Again, our pagan statutes seem to have been framed 
for service onlj^ in the public streets. We have a say- 
ing that our bouse is our castle; it is so sometimes, in 
a wide and wicked sense. No writ runs in it. Law 
pauses at the threshold ; and the crown itself, the 
majesty of public right, can only break those portals 
after due solemnities and in the wake of some atro- 
cious crime. In a Moslem harem, no such feudal se- 
crecy is found. Every room in a house is open to the 



DOMESTIC LAW. 299 

Koran ; every act of the lord must be conformable to 
rule ; and a man's wife, his child, his slave, may cite 
the Koran against him. In Islam, every one knows 
the law by heart ; the Koran being a text which can 
never fall out of date. All Moslem jurists muFt 
adopt this text, which they are only free to expound 
within certain limits, and every cadi may go back to 
the original in his day of doubt. The basis of public 
justice is the same in every age and in every land. 
In states like England and America, we have no great 
body of divine, indisputable law, by which all queries 
might be answered, all problems might be solved. 
When a case arises in our courts, which no enact- 
ment appears to meet, where do our judges look for 
guidance 't Do they turn to the Gospels. Do they 
read St. Paul ? They never think of such a course. 
The Gospels make no part of our legal store. If we 
teach the decalogue in our infant-schools, and preach 
it in our chapels, we make no use of it in our law 
courts. Proud, as it would seem, of our Pagan code, 
which puts so much of our conduct into contrast with 
our. creed, we make a boast of this freedom from re- 
straint, and only on our grand occasions, as it were, 
admit the presence in our midst of a purer law. 

Now it is one of the open facts of our modern soci- 
eties in London and New York, that a woman's rank 
in the family is either high or low according to the 
loyalty with which we follow that Gospel law of love 
which the courts of justice may, if they please, ignore. 
A Turk is not permitted by the cadi to set aside /w's 
Sermon on the Mount as a precept for Sundays, for 
good women, for men in childhood and old age. 
Even in the privacy of his harem, an Asiatic is gov- 
erned by some kind of moral and religious rules; 
while an American is governed in his home only by 



300 ^"^W AMEBIC A. 

legal and commercial precepts, from which every 
moral and religious feeling may have been utterly 
divorced. Thus it happens that an Oriental wife, 
though she ma}^ be living in the state of polygamy, 
has in some capital points a wider freedom in her 
circle than the most highly cultured lady of New 
York. 

Is that the end of our long endeavor after a Chris- 
tian life ? N'o religious man or woman thinks so ; 
and at this moment a thousand busy brains and gen- 
tle hearts are working on the problem of our passage 
from this stage of growth into a religion of higher 
truth. Some of these seekers after better things may 
be groping in the dark ; looking for light where light 
is not ; but in so far as they are seeking honestly and 
with earnest heed to get into the better way, they 
deserve our study and respect. 

Foremost among these seekers after light, are the 
Brethren of Mount Lebanon in the State of New 
York. 



MOUNT LEBANON. 301 



CHAPTER XLII. 

MOUNT LEBANON. 

On a sunny hill-side, three miles south of New 
Lebanon Springs, (a watering-place in the upper 
country of the lovely river Hudson, at which idlers 
from New York and Massachusetts spend the hot 
weeks of summer, lounging in frame sheds, flirting 
under chestnuts, driving over broken roads, sipping 
water from the well, — which a negro has just told 
me that a horse may drink without doing itself any 
harm !) stands a group of bu-ildings, prim and yet pic- 
turesque; the chief home of a religious body, small in 
number, singular in dress and in ideas, and only to be 
found, as yet, in the United States. 

This village is Mount Lebanon, the chief home 
and centre of a celibate people, founded by Ann Lee ; 
knoAvn to scoifers as a comic institution unattached, 
under'the name of the Shaker Village ; Shaker being 
a term of mockery and reproach, like most of our reli- 
gious names; one which the members meekly accept, 
and of which they are shyly proud. Among the elect 
they are known as the United Society of Believers in 
Christ's Second Appearing. 

Needing a little rose-water, I asked a friend where 
the best might be got. "You must apply," he said, 
" at any of the stores where they sell Shaker scents." 
Li quiring about the best place for collecting Ameri- 
can shrubs and flowers, my companion said, "You 
must ride over to Mount Lebanon, as no one in either 
New York or Massachusetts can match the Shakers 
in producing seeds and plants," My curiosity was 



302 NEW AMERICA. 

piqued. Why should the villagers of Mount Lebanon 
excel the rest of their countrymen in such an art? 
Of course, I knew that the Essenes were florists and 
seedsmen, as well as rearers of bees and growers of 
herbs and corn : but then those Hebrew anchorites 
lived in a time when husbandry was contemned a& a 
servile art, unfit to occupy the thoughts, to engage 
the hands of free men; and they gave themselves up to 
a life of field labor, not for the profits wiiich it might 
bring them, but as an exercise of the spirit and a trial 
of the flesh. In the neighborhood of Mount Leba- 
non, — a ridge of wooded hills, furrowed with bright 
dales and glades, and with tiny becks of water run- 
ning east and south from the Springs, — no man af- 
fects to despise farming as a lowly craft, the work of 
women and slaves ; on the contrary, all the best tal- 
ents of this region are invested in the land ; and re- 
nown of its kind lies in waiting for the man who 
shall produce from his acres the finest and moat am- 
ple crops. " Why, then," I asked my friend, "where 
all are striving to excel in the art of producing plenty 
from the soil, should the Shakers of Mount Lebanon 
be the only seedsmen in the State?" "Guess," said 
he, after a moment's thought, "it is because they give 
their minds to it." 

This saying about the Shakers giving their minds 
to the culture of land may be used as a key to unlock 
nearly all the secrets of Mount Lebanon. As you 
climb up this green hill-side from the pretty hamlet 
of New Lebanon, you may see in the clean roads, in 
the bright swards, in the trim hedges, more than all 
else, in the fresh meek faces of men and girls, and 
in the strange sad light of their loving eyes, how 
much has been done in a few short years towards 
converting this corner of New York State from a 



MOUNT LEBANON. 303 

rugged forest, the haunt of Iroquois and Lenni Le- 
nape, into the likeness of an earthly Eden. The 
rough old nature shows itself near. Yon crests and 
tops are clothed in their primeval woods, though the 
oaks and chestnuts are now in their second growth. 
Rocks crop out, and stones lie about you. Much of 
the land has never been reclaimed. The paths are all 
open ; and every man with a gun may shoot down 
game, as freely as he might in the prairies of Ne- 
braska. But the hand of man has been laid on the 
soil with a tight, though a tender grasp ; doing its 
work of beauty, and calling forth beauty in exchange 
for love and care. Where can you find an orchard 
like this young plantation on our left? Where, 
save in England, do you see such a sward? The 
trees are greener, the roses pinker, the cottages 
neater, than on any slope. JSTew Lebanon has almost 
the face of an English valley, rich with the culture of 
a thousand years. You see that the men who till 
these fields, who tend these gardens, who bind these 
sheaves, who train these vines, who plant these apple- 
trees, have been drawn into putting their love into 
the daily task ; and you hear with no surprise that 
these toilers, ploughing and planting in their quaint 
garb, consider their labor on the soil as a part of their 
ritual, looking upon the earth as a stained and de- 
graded sphere, which they have been called to redeem 
from corruption and restore to God. 

The plan, the life, the thought of Mount Lebanon 
are written in its grassy streets. This large stone 
building on your right — an edifice of stone in a region 
of sheds and booths — is the granary; a very fine barn, 
the largest (I am told) in America; a cow-shed, a hay- 
loft, a store-house, of singular size and happy contriv- 
ance; and its presence here, on a high place, in the 



304 NEW AMEBIC A. 

gateway, so to speak, of the community, is a typical 
fact. 

The Granary is to a Shaker what the Temple was to 
a Jew. 

Beyond the barn, in the green lane, stands ITorth 
House, the dwelling of Elder Frederick and Elderess 
Antoinette (in the world they would be called Fred- 
erick W. Evans, and Mary Antoinette Doolittle), co- 
heads of this large family in the Shaker Society. 
Below their house, among the shrubs and gardens, lies 
the Visitors' house, in which it has been my fortune 
to spend, with Frederick and Antoinette, a few sum- 
mer days. Around these buildings rise the sheds and 
stores of the family. Next come a host of gardens, 
in which the Baltimore vine runs joyously up poles 
and along espaliers; then the church lying a little way 
back from the road, a regular white frame of wood, 
plain as a plank, with a boiler roof, a spacious, airy 
edifice, in which the public service of the society is 
sung, and danced on Sunday, to the wondering delight, 
often the indecent laughter of a crowd of idlers from 
the Springs. !Near by stands Church House, of which 
Elder Daniel and Elderess Polly (in the world Daniel 
Grossman and Polly Reed) are the co-heads; with the 
school, the store, at which pretty trumperies are sold 
to the Gentile belles. Beyond these buildings, higher 
up the hill, stand South House, East House, and some 
other houses. In all these dwellings live families of 
Shakers. Elder Frederick is the public preacher; but 
every family has its own male, its own female head. 
One family lives at Canaan, seven miles distant, to 
which I have made a separate visit ; while just beyond* 
the crest of yon hill, in the State of Massachusetts, 
you find another society — the settlement of Hancock. 

No Dutch town has a neater aspect, no Moravian 



MOUNT LEBANON. 305 

hamlet a softer husli. The streets are quiet; for here 
you have no grog-shop, no beer-liouse, no loek-up, no 
pound ; of the dozen edifices rising about you — work- 
rooms, barns, tabernacle, stables, kitchens, schools, and 
dormitories — not one is either foul or noisy; and every 
building, whatever may be its use, has something of 
the air of a chapel. The paint is all fresh ; the planks 
are all bright ; the windows are all clean. A white 
sheen is on everything ; a happy quiet reigns around. 
Even in what is seen of the eye and heard of the ear, 
Mount Lebanon strikes you as a place where it is al- 
ways Sunday. The walls appear as though they had 
been built only yesterday; a perfume, as from many 
unguents, floats down the lane; and the curtains and 
the window-blinds are of spotless white. Everything 
in the hamlet looks and smells like household things 
which have been long laid up in lavender and rose- 
leaves. 

The people are like their village; soft in speech, 
demure in bearing, gentle in face; a people seeming 
to be at peace, not only with themselves, but with 
nature and with heaven. Though the men are oddly 
attired — in a sort of Arab sack, with a linen collar, 
and no tie, an under vest buttoned to the throat 
and falling below the thighs, loose trousers rather 
short, and broad-brimmed hat, nearly always made of 
straw, — they are grave in aspect, easy in manner, with 
no more sense of looking comic in the eyes of strangers 
than either an English judge on the bench or an Arab 
sheikh at his prayer. The women are habited in a 
small muslin cap, a white kerchief wrapped round the 
chest and shoulders, a sa<!ik or skirt dropping in a 
straight line from the waist to the ankle, white socks 
and shoes ; but apart from a costume neither rich in 
color nor comely in make, the sisters have an air of 
26* 



306 y^W AMERICA. 

SAveetness and repose which falls upon the spirit like 
music shaken out from our village bells. After spend- 
ing a few days among them, seeing them at their 
meals and at their prayers, in their private amusements 
and in their household work, after making the personal 
acquaintance of a score of men, of a dozen women, I 
find myself thinking that if any chance were to throw 
me down, and I were sick in spirit, broken in health, 
there would be few female faces, next after those of 
my own wife and kin, that would be pleasanter to see 
about my bed. Life appears to move on Mount Leb- 
anon in an easy kind of rhythm. Order, temperance, 
frugality, worship — these are the Shaker things which 
strike upon j^our senses first; the peace and innocence 
of Eden, when contrasted with the wrack and riot of 
New York. Every one seems busy, every one tranquil. 
No jerk, no strain, no menace, is observed, for nothing 
is done, nothing can be done in a Shaker settlement 
by force. Every one here is' free. Those who have 
come into union came unsought; those who would go 
out may retire unchecked. No soldiers, no police, no 
judges, live here; and among the members of a society 
in which everj' man stakes his all, appeal to the courts 
of law is a thing unknown. Unlike the Syrian Leb- 
anon, she has no Druse, no Maronite, no Ansayri, no 
Turk, within her frontier; peace reigns in her councils, 
in her tabernacles, in her fields. Look at these cheery 
urchins, in their broad straw hats and with their 
dropping sash, as they leap and gambol on the turf, 
laughing, pulling at each other, filling this green hill- 
road with the melodies only to be heard when happy 
children are at play. Their hearts are evidently light. 
Look at these little blue-eyed girls (those two with the 
curly heads are children of a bad mother, who eloped 
last year with a neighbor, when their father was away 



MOUNT LEBANON. ' 307 

ill the field with Grant), very shy, and sweet, and 
clean, and comely are they in their new attire; if ever 
you saw little girls like angels, surely these are such. 

Yet, is it not strange to us that young men and 
young women should be found living in this beautiful 
place, in the midst of peace and plenty, without 
thoughts of love? And is it not sad to reflect that 
those merry boys and girls, whose voices come in 
peals of laughter down the lane, will never, if they 
stay in this community, have little ones of their own 
to play on the village sward? 

The Shaker is a monk, the Shakeress a nun. They 
have nothing to say to this world ; yet their church, so 
often described as a moral craze, a religious comedy, 
a ritual of high jinks, at best a church of St. Vitus, 
not of St. Paul, will be seen, when we come to under- 
stand it, to have some singular attractions. The mag- 
netic power which it is exercising on American thought 
would, of itself, compel us, even though we should be 
found unwilling hearers, to sit out the comedy and try 
to comprehend the plot. 



308 NEW AMERICA. 

CHAPTER XLIIL 

A SHAKER HOUSE. 

During the days which I have been spending at 
North House, the guest of Frederick and Antoinette, 
I have had every opportunity given to me of seeing 
and judging for myself the virtues and faiHngs of the 
Shaker brethren. I have been eating their food, lodging 
in their chambers, driving in their carriages, talking 
with their elders, strolling over their orchards; I have 
been with them of a morning in the field, at noon by 
the table, at night in their meeting-rooms; watching 
them at their work, at their play, at their prayers; in 
short, living their life, and trying to comprehend the 
spirit which inspires it. 

My room is painfully bright and clean. No Haar- 
lem vrouw ever scraped her floor into such perfect 
neatness as my floor; nor could the wood, of which it 
is made, be matched in purity except in the heart of 
an uncut forest pine. A bed stands in the corner, with 
sheets and pillows of spotless white. A table on 
which lie an English Bible, some few Shaker tracts, an 
inkstand, a paper-knife ; four cane chairs, arranged in 
angles; a piece of carpet by the bed-side; a spittoon 
in one corner, complete the furniture. A closet on one 
side of the room contains a second bed, a wash-stand, 
a jug of water, towels ; and the whole apartment is 
light and airy, even for a frame house. The Shakers, 
who have no doctors among them, and smile at our 
Gentile ailments — headaches, fevers, colds, and what 
not — take a close and scientific care of their ventila- 
tion. Every building on Mount Lebanon — farm, 



A SHAKE B HOUSE. 309 

granary, mill, and dwelling — is provided with shafts, 
fans, flappers, drafts, and vents. The stairway is built 
as a funnel, the vane as an exhauster. Stoves of a 
special pattern warm the rooms in winter, with an ad- 
justment delicate enough to keep the temperature for 
weeks within one degree of warmth. Fresh air is the 
Shaker medicine. "We have only had one case of 
fever in thirty-six years," says Antoinette: "and we 
are very much ashamed of ourselves for having had it; 
it was wholly our fault." 

North House, the dwelling of Elder Frederick's 
family, has the same whiteness and brightness, the 
same order, the same articles in every room. An- 
toinette led me over it yesterday, from the fruit-cellars 
to the roof, showing me the kitchens, the ladies' 
chambers, the laundries, the meeting-rooms, and the 
stoves. My friend William Haywood (civil engineer 
to the City of London) and his wife, were with me; 
the engineer was no less smitten by surprise at the 
singular beauty and perfect success which the Shakers 
have attained in the art of ventilation, than the lady 
was charmed by the sweetness, purity, and brightness 
of the corridors and rooms. Males and females dwell 
apart as to their rooms, though they eat at a common 
lable, and lodge under a common roof. "How do 
you treat a man who comes into union with his wife 
and children — that sometimes happens ? " Antoinette 
smiled, "Oh, yes! that happens pretty often; they 
fall into the order of brother and sister — and make 
very pretty Shakers." "But," said the lady, "they 
see each other ? " " That is so," answered Antoinette ; 
"they live in the same family ; they become brother 
and sister. They do not cease to be man and woman ; 
in forsaking each other, they only cease to be husband 
and wife." Some of these ladies who live under 



310 NEW AMERICA. 

Frederick's roof in North House, have husbands (as 
the world would call them) living close beside theii 
rooms ; but they would hold it to be a weakness, per- 
haps a sin, to feel any personal happiness in each 
other's company. They live for God alone. The love 
that is in their hearts — so far as it is capable of bear- 
ing bounteous fruit — ought to be shed on each of the 
Saints alike, without preference on account of either 
quality or sex. 

Is it always so ? After this morning's early meal, 
Antoinette, who had come into my room, where 
Frederick and some of the Elders had already dropt 
in for a social chat in answer to some of my wondering 
worldly questions, told me, in the presence of four or 
five men, that she felt towards Frederick, her co-ruler 
of the house, a special and peculiar love, not as 
towards the man, and in the Gentile way, as she had 
heard of the world's doings in such matters, but as 
towards the child of grace and agent of the heavenly 
Father. She told me, also, that she had sweet and 
tender passages of love with many who were gone 
away out of sight — the beings whom we should call 
the dead — and that these passages of the spirit were 
of the same kind as those which she enjoyed with 
Frederick. The functions which these two persons 
exercise in the family, as male and female chiefs, give 
them the privilege of this close relation, — this wed- 
lock of the soul, if I may use that phrase to express a 
sympathy which, not being of the world, has no 
worldly words to represent it. 

The ladies usually sleep in pairs, two in a room ; 
the men have separate rooms. One bed is made to 
slide beneath another, so that when the chamber is 
arranged for the day-time, there is ample space and a 
sense of air. Nothing in these apartments hints that 



A SHAKER HOUSE. 311 

the people who occupy them seek after an ascetic life. 
All the ladies have looking-glasses in their rooms, 
though they are sometimes told, in love, to guard their 
hearts against the abuse to which these vanities might 
lead. "Females," says Frederick in his homely 
humor, "need to be steadied, some." The dress of 
these ladies, though the rule is strict as to shape, is 
not confined to either a single color. On some of the 
pegs hang dresses of blue cotton, lawn stuff", white 
muslin ; and even at church a good many of the ladies 
appear in lilac gowns, a color which becomes them 
well. "We leave the individual taste rather free," 
says Frederick; "we find out by trial what is best; 
and when we have found a good thing, either in a 
dress or in anything else, we stick to it." 

These Shakers dine in silence. Brothers and sisters 
sit in a common room, at tables ranged in a line, a few 
feet apart. They eat at six in the morning, at noon, 
at six in the evening ; following in this respect a rule 
which is all but uniform in America, especially in the 
western parts of tins continent from the Mississippi 
Iviver to the Pacific Ocean. They rally to the sound 
of a bell ; file into the eating-room in a single line, 
women going up to one end of the room, men to the 
other; when they drop on their knees, for a short and 
silent prayer ; sit down, and eat, helping each other to 
the food. Not a word is spoken, unless a brother 
need some help from a brother, a sister from a sister. 
A whisper serves, i^o one gossips with her neighbor ; 
for every one is busy with her own affairs. Even the 
help that any one may need is given and taken with- 
out thanks ; such forms of courtesy and politeness not 
being considered necessary in a family of saints. 
Elder Frederick sits at the end, not at the head, of 
one table. Elderess Antoinette at the other end. 



312 N^W AMERICA. I 

The food, though it is very good of its kind, and very 
well cooked, is simple ; being wholly, or almost 
wholl}*, produce of the earth ; tomatoes, roast apples, 
jDcaches, potatoes, squash, hominy, boiled corn, and the 
like. The grapes are excellent, reminding me of those 
of Bethlehem ; and the eggs, hard eggs, boiled eggs, 
scrambled eggs, are delicious. The drink is water, 1 
milk, and tea. Then we have pies, tarts, candies, ] 
dried fruits and syrups. For my own part, being a ! 
Gentile and a sinner, I have been indulged in cutlets, { 
chickens, and home-made wine. " Good food and i 
sweet air," says Frederick, " are our only medicines." 
The rosy flesh of his people, a tint but rarely seen in 
the United States, appears to answer very well for his , 
assertion, that in such a place no other physic is i 
required. These people say, they want no Cherokee i 
medicines, no plantation bitters, no Bourbon cocktails, ' 
none of the thousand tonics by which the dyspeptic 
children of New York whip up their flagging appe- 
tites, and cleanse their impure blood. Frederick has 
a fierce antipathy to doctors. "Is it not strange," 
says he, " that you wise people of the world keep a 
set of men, who lie in wait for you until by some 
mistake of habit you fall sick, and who then come ; 
in, and poison you with drugs ? " How can T reply to 
him, except by a little laugh ? ; 

'Eo words being spoken during meals, about twenty I 
minutes serves them amply for repast. One minute 
more, and the table is swept bare of dishes ; the plates, 
the knives and forks, the napkins, the glass, are 
cleaned and polished, every article is returned to its 
proper place, and the sweet, soft sense of order is 
restored. . ' 

A man has little inducement to dally with the .j 
cheery wine ; and as no cigar has ever been allowed j 



A SHAKER HOUSE. 313 

to profane the precincts of Kortli House, I rise after a 
cup of black coffee, and, joining a knot of Brethren, 
stroll into the fields. 

Dropping with Frederick into the schools, the barns, 
the workshops, I have learned that the Shaker estate 
on and around Mount Lebanon consists of nearly ten 
thousand acres of the best woodland and lowland in 
the State of IlTew York. "^For a long time, as lots fell 
into the market, the family has been buying land; but 
they have now got as much as they can cultivate; 
more, indeed, than they can cultivate by their own 
forces ; and for some years past they have been com- 
pelled, by the extent of their family estates, to hire 
laborers from among the world's people in the villages 
about. As they are never angry, never peevish, never 
unjust (I have heard this said elsewhere, by men who 
hate their principles and traduce their worship), Gen- 
tile laborers come to them very freely, and remain as 
long as they are allowed to stay. ' These smiths in 
the forge by the roadway are World's people ; that lad 
in the cart is a cottager's son ; those fellows making 
liay in the meadow are Gentiles working on the 
Shaker lands. These laborers have come to Mount 
Lebanon to live and learn. They get a very fine 
schooling, and are paid for being at school. No other 
farming in America reaches the perfection that is here 
attained ; and a clever young lad can hardly pass a 
season among these fields and farms without picking 
up good habits and useful hints. 

' Bat the chiefs of Mount Lebanon can see that this 
S3' stem of mixed labor, this throwing of the saint and 
sinner into a common society, for the sake of gain, is 
foreign to the genius of their order. Such a system, 
if it were to grow upon them, would be hostile to their 
first conception of celestial industry ; it would, in ftxct, 
27 



314 ■ ^£!W AMEBIC A. 

by the operation of a natural law, degenerate into a 
feudal and commercial business, in which the Saints 
would be the bankers and proprietors, the sinners 
would be the laborers and serfs. That is not an end 
for which they have denied themselves so much. 
Even their wish to do good among the Gentiles must 
not lead them into what is wrong ; and they are now 
considering whether it may not be wiser for them to 
part with all their surplus lands. ' 

I need not say that any estate which has been for a 
few years under Shaker ploughs and spades will sell in 
the market at what would otherwise be considered as 
a fancy price. 

Climbing up the hill-road from the pretty valley of 
New Lebanon, I notice the fine rows of apple-trees 
growing in the hedges, after the English fashion in 
some counties. Elder Frederick, himself of English 
birth, is pleased to hear me speak of the old country. 
"Aye," says he; "this green lane, and these fruit- 
trees, carry me back to my old home." Americans 
of the higher class, when they are grave and tender, 
always speak of England by the name of Home. The 
trees in this lane are planted with care and skill ; but 
I notice, not without curiosity, that in the midst of so 
much order, one apple-tree stands a little from the 
line. " How do you prevent the passers-by — the lane 
being a public highway — from snatching at the fruit 
and injuring your trees?" The Elder smiles ; if the 
flush of light in his soft blue eyes can be called a 
smile. "Look at yon tree," says he, "a little in front 
of the rest ; that is our sentinel ; it bears a large, sweet 
apple, which ripens a fortnight before the others ; and 
it is easy for every one to reach. Those who want an 
apple pluck one from its boughs, and leave the other 
trees untouched." Is it always true, that the children 



A SHAKER HOUSE. 315 

of this world are wiser in their generation than the 
chiklren of light ? 

Every man among the brethren has a trade ; some 
of them have two, even three or four trades. No one 
may be an idler, not even under the pretence of study, 
thought, and contemplation. Every one must take 
his part in the family business ; it may be farming, 
building, gardening, smith-w^ork, painting ; every one 
must follow his occupation, however high his rank 
and calling in the church. Frederick is a gardener 
and an architect. We have been out this afternoon 
seeing an orchard of apple-trees which he has planted, 
the great barn which he has built, and I have good 
grounds for concluding that this orchard, this barn, 
are the finest works of their kind in the United States. 
The Shakers believe in variety of labor, for variety of 
occupation is a source of pleasure, and pleasure is 
the portion meted out by an indulgent Father to his 
Saints. 

The ladies at Mount Lebanon — all these sisters are 
ladies in speech, in manner, in garb — have no out- 
door work to perform ; some are employed in the 
kitchen, some in waiting on others (duties which they 
take in turn, a month for each course), some in weav- 
ing cloth, some in preserving fruit, some in distilling 
essences, some in. making fans and knick-knacks. Maple 
syrup is an article for which they have a good demand; 
they make rose-water, cherry- water, peach-water; they 
sew, they sing, they teach children, and teach them 
very well. Their school is said to be one of the best 
for a good general education in New York State. 



816 NEW AMEBIC A. 

CHAPTER XLIV. 

SHAKER UNION. 

Very little study of the work of the followers of 
Ann Lee will serve to show that Shakerism, as an 
actual fact in the domestic life of America (whatever 
we may think about its origin), is far from being a 
mere folly, to be seen on a Sunday morning with a 
party of ladies, a diversion between the early dinner 
and the afternoon drive, to be wondered at, laughed 
over, and then forgotten as a thing of no serious con- 
sequence to the world. Mount Lebanon is the centre 
of a system which has a distinct genius, a strong 
organization, a perfect life of its own, through which it 
would appear to be helping to shape and guide, in no 
slight and unseen measure, the spiritual career of the 
United States. 

In many of their ideas the Shakers would appear to 
be followers of the Essenes, and in the higher regions 
of emotion they seem to be wielding the same sort of 
power as that Hebrew society of bee-masters and 
seedsmen. 

Their church is based on these grand ideas : — The 
kingdom of heaven has come ; Christ has actually 
appeared on earth ; the personal rule of God has been 
restored. In the wake of these ideas, dependent upon 
them follow many more : — the old law is abolished ; 
the command to multiply has ceased ; Adam's sin has 
been atoned; the intercourse of heaven and earth has 
been restored ; the curse is taken away from labor ; 
the earth, and all that is on it, will be redeemed ; 
angels and spirits have become, as of old, the familiars 
and ministers of men. 



SHAKER UNION. 317 

Only the elect, it is said, are aware of these mighty 
chano-es havino' taken place on the earth ; for the 
many are blind and deaf, as they were of old, knowing 
not the Lord when He calls them into union. A few 
are chosen by the grace of God, and in the hearts of 
His own elected ones He reigns and works. On being 
called by Him, men die to the world, forgetting in 
their new and heavenly stage of existence its rivalries, 
and pleasures, and its passions. In the firm belief of 
these people, the call which they obey is not to a mere 
change of life, but to a new life of the soul, in which 
the world has no share. Birth and marriage are at an 
end ; death itself has become to them only a change 
of dress, a shedding of the visible robe of flesh for an 
invisible glory of the spirit. 

These fundamental ideas control the Shaker policy, 
inward and outward. 

Thus, no man can be born into their body, as no 
member of their church can marry. In union, as they 
say it is in heaven, the sexes must dwell apart ; love 
must be celibate, in spirit and in fact, shedding its 
worldly and unregenerate relations with the flesh. 
Most of those who come into union at Mount Lebanon 
are young men and girls, such as in Italy and Spain 
would go into monasteries and convents ; but when 
married people enter, they must agree in future to 
live apart, in chastity and obedience, pure from all 
fancies and desires of their olden life. Again, no man 
may be drawn by lures of the world into union with 
their body, since the elected ones are strictly forbidden 
to make use of any lure, any argument, with the Gen- 
tile. God, it is said, in His own time, in His own 
way, will draw to Himself the men whom He has 
made His own. The Shaker union being considered 
by them as the heavenly kingdom, they are to have 
27 * 



318 NEW AMERICA. 

no part in the task of peopling it with Saints ; for the 
children of grace can be called into His rest by none 
but God. Heaven must be sought of man ; she will 
never again go forth to seek ; her day of missionary 
work being past. 

If the community of Saints gives much to a mem- 
ber, it demands much as the price of his fellowship. 
When a man is led upwards of the spirit into a yearn- 
ing after peace, he must ofier at the gates of Mount 
Lebanon everything which a man of the world would 
prize: his wealth, his ease, his glory, his affections; 
for what is earth to heaven, and what is man in the 
sight of God ? Before an applicant can be received 
into this society, he must throw his possessions into a 
common fund ; he must consent to labor with his 
hands for the general good ; he must forget all ranks 
and titles of the world ; he must abandon his house 
and kin, his books and friends ; he must tear himself 
away from his wife and child. On these high terms, and 
on no other, can a Gentile enter into the Shakers' rest. 

Yet thousands of persons enter into union. Mount 
Lebanon is but one of eighteen Shaker societies, which 
are scattered throughout these United States. Be- 
sides New Lebanon, there are tw^o other settlements 
in. New York State, namely: Water Vliet, in Albany 
county (the original Shaker society), and Groveland, 
in Livingston county. There are four villages in Mas- 
sachusetts : Hancock (the birthplace of Lucy Wright) 
and Tyringham in Berkshire county, Harvey and Shir- 
ley in Middlesex county ; two in New Hampshire : 
Enfield in Grafton county, Canterbury in Merrimac 
county ; two in Maine : Alfred in York county. New 
Gloucester in Cumberland county ; one village in Con- 
necticut : Enfield in Hartford county (the birthplace 
of Meacham, the Shaker Moses); four villages in Ohio : 



SHAKER UNION. 319 

White Water in Hamilton county, Water Vliet in 
Montgomerj^ county, Union village in Warren county, 
and North Union in Cuyahoga county ; two in Ken- 
tucky : Pleasant Hill in Mercer county, and South 
Union in Logan county. In spite of their hard life, — 
what may seem to us their very hard life, — the Shak- 
ers increase in number ; the census of 1860 reporting 
them as more than six thosaund strong. 

Of course, when they are measured against the 
thirty millions of Christian people living in the 
United States, some six or seven thousand celibate 
Shakers may appear of but small account ; and this 
would be the truth, if the strength of spiritual and 
moral forces could be told in figures, like that of a 
herd of cattle and a kiln of bricks. But if numbers 
are much, they are far from being all. One man with 
ideas maybe worth a Parliament, an army, — nay, a 
whole nation without them. The Shakers may not 
be scholars and men of genius. In appearance they 
are often very simple ; but they aro men with ideas, 
men capable of sacrifice. Unlike the mass of man- 
kind, who live to make money, the Shakers soar 
above the level of all common vices and temptations, 
and from the height of their unselfish virtue, oifer to 
the worn and wearied spirit a gift of peace and a 
place of rest. 

No one can look into the heart of American society 
without seeing that these Shaker unions have a power 
upon men beyond that of mere numbers. If a poll- 
tax were decreed, they might pay less into the ex- 
chequer than the Seceders, the Second Adventists, 
the Schwenkfelders, and the Jews ; but their influ- 
ence on the course of American thought is out of all 
comparison with that of such minor sects. The 
Shakers have a genius, a faith, an organization; which 



320 NEW AMEBIC A. 

are not only strange, but seductive ; whicli have been 
tried in the fire of persecution, and which are hostile 
to society as it stands. A Shaker village is not only 
a new church, but a new nation. These people, who 
have just been out with me in the fields and lanes, 
know nothing of New York, of the United States. 
They are not Americans; and have no part in the 
politics and quarrels so often raging around them. 
They vote for no President ; they hold no meetings ; 
they want nothing from the White House. The right 
to think, vote, speak, and travel, is to them but an 
idle dream ; they live with angels, and are more fa- 
miliar (as they tell me) with the dead than with the 
living. Sister Mary, who was sitting in my room not 
an hour ago, close to my hand, and leaning on this 
Bible, which then lay open at the Canticles, told me 
that the room was full of spirits ; of beings as pal- 
pable, as audible to her, as my own figure and my 
own voice. The dreamy look, the wandering eye, the 
rapt expression, would have alarmed me for her state 
of health ; only that I know with what sweet decorum 
she conducts her life, and with what subtile fingers she 
makes damson tarts. Frederick has the same beliefs ; 
if you like the word better, the same illusions. What 
need can such a people have for votings and palavers? 
God is their only right ; obedience to His will their 
only freedom. 

That such a community should be able to exist in 
the United States, is a sign ; that it should have seized 
upon men's aifeetions, that it should have become pop- 
ular and prosperous, growing without effort, conquer- 
ing without conflict, drawing towards itself many pure, 
unselfish persons from the adjoining towns and states, 
is little less than a judgment on our churches. And 
such, in truth, the Sliakers call it. 



SHAKER UWION. 321 

On entering into union with the believers, then, a 
convert must withdraw himself from the world ; paying 
off all debts, discharging all bonds and trusts, renounc- 
ing all contracts, cancelling all wills and settlements, 
giving up all friends and kinsmen, as though he were 
parted from them by the grave. Indeed, the call which 
he receives from Grod is to be accepted as a proof that 
his past life as a sinful creature is at an end: — in final 
words, the flesh is deposed and the world put away. 

On being received into the union, he no longer re- 
gards the earth as a spoil to be won, but as a pledge 
to be redeemed. By man it fell, by man it may be 
restored. Every one chosen of the Father has the 
privilege of aiding in this redemption; not only by the 
toil of his hands, by the contrivance of his brain, but 
by the sympathy of his soul ; covering the world with 
verdure, filling the air with perfume, storing the gran- 
ary with fruit. 

The spirit in which he puts his hand out is a new 
one to him. Hitherto, the earth has been his servant; 
now it is his partner, bound to him by celestial ties. 
He looks at the face of nature with a lover's eyes, and 
the great passions of his heart, directed from his 
money, from his wife, now turn upon the garden and 
the field. But he understands that labor alone is not 
enough ; he knows that the laborer must be worthy 
of his task, that this fanaticism must be guided by 
angelic wisdom. According to Shaker theories, the 
earth has been accursed and darkened by human pas- 
sions, and must be redeemed into beauty by human 
love. Man makes the landscape smile and frown ; the 
plant you train will grow into your likeness ; and if 
you would have a lovely garden, you should live a 
lovely life. Such at least is the Shakers' thought. 

My Gentile brother, if we were to flout this notion 



322 NE W A3IER TO A. 

as a crazy dream, the fact would still remain, and we 
should have to account for it as we might, that these 
Shakers get more out of the earth by love, than we get 
by our craft. This fact is not a thing to be disputed 
and denied; the evidence'^s found in a hundred Broad- 
wa}^ stores and London shops. If we deny that the 
earth will answer love by love, we are bound to explain 
the beauty and fertility of Mount Lebanon in some 
other way. 

This morning I have spent an hour with Frederick 
in the new orchard, listening to the story of how he 
planted it, as to a tale by some Arabian poet. "A tree 
has its wants and wishes," said the Elder ; " and a man 
should study them as a teacher watches a child, to see 
what he can do. If you love the plant, and take heed 
of what it likes, you will be well repaid by it. I don't 
know if a tree ever comes to know you ; and I think 
it may; but I am sure it feels when you care for it 
and tend it ; as a child does, as a woman does. Now, 
when we planted this orchard, we first got the very 
best cuttings in our reach; we then built a house for 
every plant to live in, that is to say, we dug a deep 
hole for each ; we drained it well ; we laid down tiles 
and rubble, and then filled in a bed of suitable manure 
and mould ; we put the plant into its nest gently, and 
pressed up the earth about it, and protected the infant 
tree by this metal fence." "You take a world of pains," 
I said. "Ah, Brother Hepworth," he rejoined, "thee 
sees we love our garden." 

Thus, when a Shaker is put upon the soil, to beau- 
tify it by his tilth, the difterence between his hus- 
bandry and that of a Gentile farmer, who is thinking 
solely of his profits, is likely to be great. "While the 
Gentile is watching for his returns, the Shaker is in- 
tent upon his service. One tries for large profits, the 



MOTHER ANN. 323 

other strives for good Work. Is it strange that a celi- 
bate man, who puts his soul into the soil — who gives 
to it all the aiiection which he would otherwise have 
lavished on wife and child — should excel a mere trad- 
ing rival in the production of fruits and flowers ? 



CHAPTER XLV. 

MOTHER ANN. 

Sitting with Elder Frederick, who has been taking 
much pains to make me understand his intricate and 
difficult code of morals, I have heard how these seeds- 
men and florists of Mount Lebanon have been made 
what they are in skill, in gentleness, in temperance 
— in all the virtues which they display — through loyal 
obedience to the lessons taught them by Ann Lee ; a 
female saint, who is only known to her followers by 
the august and holy name of Mother. She may be 
spoken of as Mother Ann. 

As a distinct and sacred people, the Shakers have 
this peculiar boast among American churches — that, 
while they are wholly of the New World in thought, 
in feeling, and in platform, having no life beyond these 
great waters, they draw the original germ of their 
existence from the old paternal soil. If they are called 
to an American paradise, the messenger of heaven 
who called them into rest was a female English seer. 

About a hundred years ago, a poor woman, living 
at Bolton-on-the-Moors, a bleak and grimy town, in 
the most stony part of South Lancashire, announced 
that she had received a call from heaven to go about 



324 N-EW AMERICA. 

the streets of her native town and testify for the truth. 
Her name was Jane ; her husband, James Wardlaw, a 
tailor, with gifts of speech, had become her first con- 
vert and expositor. These poor people had previously 
belonged to the Society of Friends; in which they 
had been forward in bearing testimony against oaths, 
against war, against formality in worship. Living in 
a hard and rocky district, in the midst of a coarse and 
brutal population, Jane had seen about her, from her 
youth upwards, a careless church, a Papist gentry, a 
drunken and fanatical crowd. Going out into the 
market-place, she had declared to these people, that 
the end of all things was at hand, that Christ was 
about to reign, that His second appearance would be 
in a woman's form, as had been long ago prefigured 
in the Psalms. Jane had never said that she herself 
w^as the female Christ ; but she had acted as though 
she believed that all the powers of earth and heaven 
had been given into her hands ; receiving converts in 
His name, confessing and remitting sins, holding com- 
munication with unseen spirits. It was assumed by 
her own people that she was filled with the Holy 
Ghost ; and whatsoever thing she affirmed, in the 
power of her attendant spirits, had been received by 
her followers as the voice of God. But her reign had 
not been long. 

Among the early converts of this female witness 
had been a girl named Ann Lee, daughter of a poor 
blacksmith ; a girl of parts, though she had never 
been taught to read and write. Born in Toad Lane 
(now Todd Street), Manchester, a lane of ale-houses 
and smithies, Ann had been brought up, first in a 
cotton mill, next in a public kitchen ; a wild creature 
from her birth, a prey to hysteria and convulsions ; 
violent in her conduct, ambitious of notice, and de- 



MOTHER ANN. 325 

voured by the lust of power. Like many girls of her 
class, she had been married while she was yet a child ; 
married to a neighboring lad, a smith of the name of 
Stanley; a man poorer even than herself. To this 
man she had borne four infants, all of whom had 
died in their tender years ; and these losses of the 
young mother may have touched her mind with a 
morbid repugnance to the offices and duties attending 
on a woman's share in our common conjugal life. 
Joining the sect of Jane Wardlaw, Ann also had 
begun to sally forth into the streets and witness for 
the truth ; lecturing the blacksmiths of Toad Lane, 
the weavers of New Cross, on the things to come, 
until the prosy old parish constable had seized her as 
a nuisance, and the magistrate had sent her to jail as 
a disturber of the public peace. While she was lying 
in prison — Old Bailey prison, on the L-well — she 
said a light had shone upon her, and the Lord Jesus 
had stood before her in the cell, and become one with 
her in form and spirit. Jane Wardlaw had never yet 
pretended to have wrestled with so high a power ; 
and when Ann Lee came out of prison, the little 
church of six or seven persons to whom she told her 
story, had raised her to the rank of Mother, in place 
of their foundress, the tailor's wife. 

A feminine church had been now openly proclaimed 
in Manchester and Bolton, with Mother Ann as that 
queen who was described b}' David, as that Bride of 
the Lamb who was seen in the Apocalypse by John. 
Christ, it was now proclaimed, had come again; not 
in His pomp and power, as the world expected Him, 
but in the flesh of a factory girl, who could neither 
read nor write. 

As the rough lads and lasses of her native town had 
only laughed at this pretence of a female church, Ann 
28 



326 ^J^W AMEBIC A. 

had received a second revelation from heaven, com- 
manding her to shake the dnst of Toad Lane from her 
feet, to gather up the sheep of her tiny fold, and to 
seek for them, and for herself, a home in the Promised 
Land. The spirits who waited upon her, angels and 
ministers, had drawn her thoughts to America, as the 
hope of free men and the seat of God's future church. 
Five males (William Lee, James Whittaker, John 
Hocknell, Eichard Hocknell, James Shepherd), and 
two females (Mary Partington and Nancy Lee) had 
been minded to cast in their lot with her; and although 
the master of the ship in which they sailed from Liver- 
pool had threatened, on the voyage out, to pitch them 
all into the sea for what he called their indecent con- 
duct, Ann, with her husband Stanley, and her seven 
disciples, had landed safely in the bay of New York. 

The only one of this little band who had felt no 
true faith in Mother Ann was her husband; but in 
spite of his want of grace, she had proceeded, on 
their reaching the Promised Land, to put her gospel 
of abstinence into force; insisting on the need for 
living a holy life, and separating h-erself, a Bride of 
the Lamb, from her husband's side. Her fixed idea 
had been, that she and her people should make eter- 
nal war against the flesh. By lust man fell from hea- 
ven ; by abstinence from carnal thoughts he might 
hope to regain his celestial rank. No form of earthly 
love could be tolerated in .the Redeemer's kingdom. 
Men called into grace must live as the angels live; 
among whom there is neither marrying nor giving 
in marriage. Every member, therefore, of her church 
had been compelled to renounce his yearning after 
love ; the wives consenting to dwell in a house apart 
from their husbands, the husbands in a house apart 
from their wives. They had put to themselves this 



MOTHER ANN. 327 

question : If all men, born into the world, are born in 
sin, and made the heirs of death in the world to come, 
how can the Saint, when raised from his fallen nature, 
dare to augment this empire of sin and death ? 

It would have been hard for Stanley to answer that 
question from Mother Ann's point of view, otherwise 
than as she answered it ; but her husband, though he 
could not give his reasons, had felt that, as a married 
man, he was being badly used. He was no mystic; 
and when his wife had put her self-denying ordinance 
into force against him, he had taken up (I am grieved 
to write it) with another woman of New York. Mo- 
ther Ann had left him, and had left New York City, 
going up the Hudson River as far as Albany, then a 
small frontier town, facing the great wilderness to- 
wards the west. Even there her people had found 
the world too much with them. Pushing out into the 
back-woods, to a spot then known to the red-skins as 
Niskenna, they had built log shanties, and taken up 
their abode in the green waste, founding the township 
now so famous as Water Vliet, the original Shaker 
settlement in New York. 

For three years and six months these strangers had 
waited in their lonely huts, clearing the forest, tilling 
the soil, rearing bees and fowls, and waiting for a sign 
from heaven. They had made no eitbrts to convert 
the Gentiles. They had fled from, rather than sought, 
the society of men. They had preached no sermons, 
printed no books, written no letters, announced no 
gospel. Desolation could hardly have been more 
complete than they found on the Hudson River at 
Niskenna. But this nest of seven believers in Mother 
Ann's divine commission, being comforted by angels 
of the night, had waited and watched for the promised 
coming in of the Saints. At length their faith in her 



328 NEW AMERICA. 

promises had been crowned by wonders. A religious 
revival wliich had broken out in Albany, spread into 
the villages of Hancock and New Lebanon, where it 
had caught up, in its electrical vortices, many sub- 
stantial sinners, including, among other well-to-do 
people, Joseph Meacham and Lucy Wright. Joseph 
and Lucy, with some of their neighbors who had 
heard of the coming of Ann Lee, had gone over the 
hills to Niskenna, as a deputation from the revivalist 
camp (Spring of 1780), and after seeing her way 
of life, hearing her words of peace, and being told 
of the appearance to her in the Manchester jail, they 
had embraced her creed, admitted her right, and 
become her first disciples on the American soil. 
Meacham had been adopted by Ann as her eldest son ; 
and the Mother had then declared that, after her time, 
the power would be given unto him from God to put 
the kingdom of heaven into perfect order. The result 
of this visit of Lucy and Joseph to Mother Ann had 
been the foundation of the Shaker societies in Hancock 
and Mount Lebanon. 

Ann had now fallen into trouble, the inheritance of 
seers and prophets from of old. The War of Lide- 
pendence being at that time brisk, and the people 
ardent in the cause, the farmers and woodmen of New 
York had taken up the notion that these Shakers, who 
raised their voices against war as the devil's work, had 
come into the land as enemies, perhaps as spies ; a 
charge which the gentry of Albany told Ann and her 
disciples they must rebut by taking the colonial oaths. 
But how were they to take the colonial oaths, seeing 
that their principles forbade them to swear at all? 
First, Meacham and the men, afterwards Ann and the 
women, had been thrown into jail, where they had 
been visited by many people, and become a topic of 



310 THE R ANN. 329 

discourse throughout New York. Instead of calming 
men's minds and putting Ann doAvu, the gentry of 
Albany soon found that they had been the means of 
spreading the fame of this strange prophetess through, 
their colony, into both the English and American 
camps. What could they do with a prisoner -who told 
them she was the female Christ ? They had thought 
her crazy, and they had fancied, she being an English- 
born woman, that it would be well to send her with a 
pass into the British lines. With that end in view, 
she had been sent down the river, but the plan could 
not be carried into eftect on account of the war; and, 
in the meantime, she had been lod-ged for security in 
Poughkeepsie jail, wdiere she held a little court of 
her owni among her attendant spirits, and left behind 
her in that town, when she quitted it, memories and 
influences which have taken shapes in the Spiritualist 
theories of a later time. 

Set free by Governor Clinton (December, 1780), 
Ann had come out of prison a famous woman ; and 
after three months had been spent by her at Water 
Vliet, in the midst of her male and female elders, she 
started on a tour of exhibition, visiting Harvard in 
Massachusetts, and many other places in the ISTew 
England colonies, increasing the number of her disci- 
ples, and providing the materials for her future model 
societies. Her w- ork had been long and toilsome ; not 
w^ithout profit to her in many ways ; but after twenty- 
eight months had been spent in these travels, she had 
returned to Water Vliet, near the Hudson River, in 
September, 1783, wasted in vigor, though she seemed 
to have become sublimed in spirit. One winter and 
one summer more she had held on to her task, but in 
the fall of 1784, she had gathered her disciples round 
her, given them a promise and a blessing, and after 
28* 



330 N^W AMERICA. 

yielding up the visible keys of her kingdom to Joseph 
and Lucy, as her successors in the male and female 
headships of the kingdom of God, she had passed 
away from their sight. 

According to the doctrines now held by the Shaker 
church, Mother Ann did not die, as mortal men and 
women die ; she became changed to the world, trans- 
figured and transformed, made invisible to the flesh 
through excess of light. From what I have heard and 
read, it seems to me probable that some of Ann's 
people were amazed at her disappearance — an event 
on which they had not counted ; nor could i\\ey recon- 
cile it with her story of that second advent in the 
Manchester jail, where their Lord had taken flesh in 
a woman's form. Their faith appears to have been 
sorely tried; but Joseph Meaeham and Lucy Wright — 
the divinely appointed king and queen of the new 
kingdom — had proved themselves equal to the mo- 
ment. "With the corpse of Ann before them, they had 
stoutly afiirmed that she was not dead. The queen 
foretold by David could never die ; the Bride whom 
John had seen in his vision could never sink into the 
grave. The Queen had been covered with robes of 
light; the Bride had passed into the secret chamber. 
Ann had withdrawal herself for a little while from 
the world, which had no part in her ; but she would 
live and reign forever amongst her own true children 
of the resurrection. The dust before them was nothing 
but a worn-out garment which the Mother had east 
away. 

Joseph and Lucy had caused this dust to be lifted 
up, and put away in a field, not in an}^ sacred place, 
in any consecrated ground, where it might rest in 
peace for the final rising; but in a common field, 
where it miffht soon be lost and forgotten, where in 



RESURRECTION ORDER. 831 

time the plough avouIcI go through it, causing it to 
mingle with the earth from whioh it had been drawn. 
A Shaker expects no further rising of the dead. In 
his conviction, the dead are now risen, and are even 
now rising. To be called into grace, is the same as 
being raised from the dead into a new life. Frederick 
and Antoinette believe that they have passed through 
the shadow, that they will die no more, that when 
their season comes they will only be withdrawn, like 
Mother Ann, from the world. They are living now, 
they are firmly convinced, in the Eesurrection Order. 



CHAPTER XL VI. 

RESUKRECTION ORDER. 

When Joseph Meacham and Lucy Wright had put 
the dust of Mother Ann away, telling her people that 
she had only changed her raiment, being clothed in 
her celestial robes as Bride of the Lamb, all ditficul- 
ties appear to have been conquered, and the faith of 
the wavering to have been made strong. The doctrine 
was seductive and bewitching. Ann was still living 
in their midst; in dreams, in ecstasies, they could see 
her, they could hear her voice. The change which 
had come upon her w^ould one day come upon them. 
How glorious for the saints to think that Death is but 
a change in the costume of life ; that the dissolving 
soul dies only to the flesh ; tliat the glory to which the 
elect attain conceals them from the world, but leaves 
them visible to eyes, audible to ears, which have been 
purified and exalted by the gift of grace ! 



332 ^^W AMERICA. 

To this dogma of the existence of a world of spirits 
— unseen by us, visible to them — the disciples of 
Mother Ann most strictly hold. In this respect, they 
agree with the Spiritualists ; indeed, they pride them- 
selves on having foretold the advent of this spiritual 
disturbance in the American mind. Frederick tells 
me (from his angels), that the reign of this spiritualistic 
frenzy is only in its opening phase ; it will sweep 
through Europe, through the world, as it is sweeping 
now through America; it is a real phenomenon, based 
on facts, and representing an actual, though an unseen 
force. Some of its professors, he admits, are cheats 
and rogues ; but that is in the nature of spirit-move- 
ments, seeing that you have evil angels as well as good 
angels. Man is not the only deceiver. If men are 
false, is there not one who is the father of lies ? When 
the higher and nether world shall have come yet 
nearer to the earth — in the riper days of the Resur- 
rection — both good and evil spirits may be expected 
to have greater power on earth. 

Antoinette, who has just been sitting in my room, 
asserts that she talks with spirits more freely and con- 
fidingly than she does with me ; yet I cannot see that 
Antoinette is crazy on any other point, and she cer- 
tainly makes neat and sensible speeches. This room, 
in which I am writing — the guest-chamber of North 
House — which seems to me empty and still, is to her 
full of seraphim and cherubim, who keep on singing 
and haranguing the livelong day. Mother Ann is 
here present ; Lucy and Joseph are present; all the 
brethren who have passed out of hwman sight are 
present — to her. You have only to watch Antoinette 
for a moment, when you are not yourself engaging 
her attention, to see, by her hushed face, by her rapt 
eye, by her wandering manner, that she believes her- 



EESURRErTION ORDER. 333 

self in another presence, more revered, more august, 
than anything of earth. Yes ; those whom we Gen- 
tiles call the dead are with her; and by this ethereal 
process of belief, the brethren of Mount Lebanon have 
conquered death and put an end to the grave. 

This morning, when Antoinette first came into my 
room, I thought she was very grave and sweet; in her 
hand she held a paper, as though she had brought it 
in to show me ; and on my inquiring what it was about 
she laid it on my table, saying it was a song which she 
had heard in the night, sung by angelic choirs. My 
eyes ran towards it ; and from her way of speaking I 
could see that she meant to give it me as a parting 
token. "Sign it. Sister Antoinette," I said, "and 
let me have it." She wrote her name on the margin 
of this song ; from a perusal of which the reader will 
see that either the copyist mistook some of the seraphic 
words, or else that the angels are not particular as to 
syntax and rhyme. 

Let us ascend the heavenly scale, 

In purity be rising ; 
In deeds of charity and love 

Let not our souls be wanting. 

On the immortal hills of truth 

Are flowers eternal blooming ; 
I long to breathe that fragrant air, 
To join my voice with angels there, 

So sweetly they are singing. 

I do not understand Antoinette to say that this 
hymn was made by the seraphs expressly for me. She 
is too simple to indulge in jests ; and I could not hurt 
her mind by any la}' remark. Perhaps it may be as 
well to add that all the chants and marches used by 
the Shakers in their services are learnt in dreams and 



334 NEW AMERICA. 

reveries. None of their sacred poetry is very good, 
according to our secular canons, though some of it has 
a lilt, a fire, that would make eifective verse if it had 
only been managed with a little more art. I have 
rarely heard a finer effect, of its kind, in music than 
that produced in the frame church on Mount Lebanon 
by four or five hundred Shakers, men and women, 
marching to this chant : 

To the bright Elysian fields, 

In the Spirit-land I go ! 
Leaving all infei-ior joys, 
All pleasures below. 

For my spirit reaches upward, 

To that celestial land, 
Where, by the power of truth and love, 

The Saints as sisters stand. 

The murmuring of the waters. 

From the troubled sea of time. 
Can never reach the peaceful shores 
Of that pure, that happy clime. 
Where angels the banners of love gently wave. 
And where saints do triumph over death and the grave! 

If we may judge by the rules established in this 
lower world, your angels make much better tunes 
than rhymes. The Shakers' marches are often very 
fine. 

To Joseph Meacham, Mother Ann's first adopted 
son on the American soil, and to Lucy, her daughter 
and successor in the female sphere, the government 
of this Church descended by divine appointment; 
and their rule, which is beyond appeal, was made 
more easy to them by the promise of their departed 
founder. "The time will come," Mother Ann had 
said, "when the Church will be gathered into order; 



RESURRECTION ORDER. 335 

bat not until after my decease. Joseph Meachani is 
my first-born son in America; he will gather the 
Church into order; bnt I shall not live to see it." 
And with this promise on her lips she had passed out 
of mortal sight. 

As yet, the believers in Mother Ann being the sec- 
ond incarnation of Christ, had been scattered through 
the world, living in it bodily for the greater part, 
though they were not of it in the spirit. Joseph and 
Lucy had drawn these believers apart into settle- 
ments : to Water Vliet and Mount Lebanon in New 
York, to Harvard and Shirley in Massachusetts, to 
Enfield in Connecticut, to Canterbury in N'ew Hamp- 
shire, to Union Village and White Water in Ohio, to 
Pleasant Hill and Soijth Union in Kentucky. Under 
their rule, a covenant had been written down and 
accepted by the brethren. The divine government 
had been confirmed : elders and deacons, female as 
well as male, had been appointed ; celibacy had been 
confirmed as binding on the Saints, and community 
of goods had been introduced among them. When 
Joseph had also passed out of sight in 1796, he had 
bequeathed an undivided power to Lucy, who then 
became the leader, representing Mother Ann, and for 
five-and-twenty years governing these Shaker societies 
with the powers of a female Pope. When her time 
had also come, she named her successor; for who, 
unless the chosen, shall have the right to choose ? 
But she had named an Elderess, not a Mother; and 
since her day the title of Mother has been abandoned, 
no female saint having sprung up among them worthy 
to bear so august a name. The present female leader 
of the Society is Betsy Bates; she is simply cane's 
Elderess Betsy; she represents the Mother only in 
the body, for Ann is thought to be herself present 



336 N^W AMERICA. 

among her children in the spirit. The chief elder 
and successor to Joseph is Daniel Boler, who may be 
regarded as the Shaker bishop ; but the active power 
of the Society (as I fancy) lies with Elder Frederick, 
the official preacher and expositor of Shaker doctrine. 
If the Shaker communities should undergo any change 
in our day, through the coming in of other lights, I 
fancy that the change will have to be brought about 
through him. Frederick is a man of ideas, and men 
of ideas are dangerous persons in a Society which 
afi'ects to have adopted its final form. Boler repre- 
sents the divine principle, Frederick the art and gov- 
ernment of the world. 

. The Family at North House contains two orders of 
members, (1) Probationers, (2) Covenanters. The first 
are men and women who have come in for a time, to 
see how they like it, and whether it likes them. Men 
in this early stage of the celestial trial retain their 
private fortunes, and maintain some slight relation to 
the Gentile world. Men of the second stage may be 
said, in eft'ect, to have taken the vow of chastity, and 
to have cast in their lot for good and evil with the 
brethren. The chiefs have very little trouble, Fred- 
erick tells me, with the novices, for any one may go 
out when he pleases, taking all that he brought in 
away with him. A poor fellow who puts in nothing, 
is generally sent away, if he desires to leave, with a 
hundred dollars in his purse. The rich men give less 
trouble than the poor, being generall}^ persons of 
higher culture and of more earnest spirit. One of 
my female friends in the community. Sister Jane, 
came in as a child with her father, Abel Knight, one 
of the first citizens of Philadelphia. She is young, 
pretty, educated, rich ; but she has given up the world 



RESURRECTION ORDER. 337 

and its delights ; and if ever I saw a happy-looking 
damsel, it is Sister Jane. 

As regards their notions of the duty of living a 
celibate life, there is (as Elder Frederick tells me) a 
great mistake abroad. They do not hold that a celi- 
bate life is right in every place and in every society, 
at all times ; they know, that if the rule of absolute 
self-denial were commonly adopted, the world would 
be unpeopled in a hundred years ; but they say that 
marriage is a state of temptation to many (as wine- 
drinking is a state of temptation to many), and they 
consider that for a male and female priesthood, such 
as they hold themselves to be as respects the world, 
this temptation is to be put away. That claim of 
being a sort of priesthood of the Saints, appointed to 
serve God and to redeem the world from sin, runs 
through the whole of their institutions. To this end, 
indeed, they have passed through death and the resur- 
rection into a state of grace. To this end the}' have 
adopted the rule of absolute submission of their own 
will to the will of God. "We admit," says Frederick, 
"two orders in the world — one of Generation, one 
of Resurrection." They claim to stand in the Resur- 
rection order; to them, therefore, the love which leads 
men into marriage is not allowed. We Gentiles stand 
in the Generation order, therefore the love which ends 
in marriage is still for a time allowed. " Generation," 
says Frederick, " is a great foe to Regeneration, and 
we give up what is called our manhood as a sacrifice 
for the world." 

" You mean to say, then, that in fact you are offering 
yourselves as an atonement ? " He paused a moment ; 
his blue eyes closed, and when he opened them again, 
slowly, as if waking from a trance, he smiled. 

"The Order of the Resurrection," he added, "is 
29 



338 N^W AMEBIC A. 

celibate, spiritual ; in it there is no marriage ; only 
love and peace." 

In their social economy, as in their moral sentiment, 
these Shakers follow the ancient Essenes. They drink 
no wine, they eat no pork. They live upon the land, 
and shun the society of towns. They cultivate the 
virtues of sobriety, prudence, meekness. They take 
no oaths, they deprecate law, they avoid contention, 
they repudiate war. They affect to hold communion 
with the dead. They believe in angels and in spirits, 
not as a theological dogma, but as a practical human 
fact. 

One circumstance which gives to the Shaker society 
an importance in the Union far beyond its rivals 
(Tunkers, Moravians, Mennonites, Schwenkfelders), is 
the fact of its being much devoted to the work of 
education. Every Shaker settlement is a school ; a 
centre from which ideas are circulated right and left, 
into every corner of the land. Men who would laugh 
at the pretensions of Mother Ann, if they stood alone, 
can hardly help being touched, if not seduced, in 
spirit, by avowals like these now following: — 

The church of the future is an American Church. 

The old law is abolished, the new dispensation 
begun. 

Intercourse between heaven and earth is restored. 

God is king and governor. 

The sin of Adam is atoned, and man made free of 
all errors except his own. 

Every human being will be saved. 

The earth is heaven, now soiled and stained, but 
ready to be brightened by love and labor into its 
primeval state. 

These propositions, which display the genius of 
Shakerism so far as it pretends to be a social and 



SPIRITUAL CYCLES. 339 

political power, at war with the principles and prac- 
tices of a republican government, are apt to fascinate 
many men who would object to a celibate life, to a 
female priest, to a community of goods. With more 
or less of clearness in avowal, these principles will 
be found in the creed of every new American church. 



CHAPTER XL VII. 

SPIRITUAL CYCLES. 

And how, we begin to ask, so soon as we have left 
the witcheries of Mount Lebanon behind us, and 
begun to look on the matter with a purely secular eye, 
are these eighteen settlements of Shakers recruited ? 
In Rome, in Seville, converts may be fed from the lay 
society in which the laws of increase hold their natural 
sway ; but in Enfield, at Mount Lebanon, in Grove- 
land, no lay community of Shakers stands outside the 
church, from which the losses by death can be repaired. 
The whole church being celibate, the losses by death 
are fixed and final ; so many to the year ; the whole 
generation in thirty years. Calls, fresh calls, must be 
made under pain of extinction ; but how are men 
called from a busy world, from a prosperous society, 
into a life of labor, chastity, confinement, and obedi- 
ence ? In Italy and Spain, it is found an uneasy task 
to persuade young men to renounce the affections, 
even for an indolent service, ligature is strong, and a 
life without love appears to many of us worse than a 
tomb. One great branch of the Christian Church, the 



340 NEW AMERICA. 

Latin, has adopted celibacy in principle, making it the 
rule for its clergy of all ranks, and fostering the prac- 
tice in its lay societies; but her success in this par- 
ticular branch of her policy has hardly equalled her 
eiforts ; and in no country of Europe, even in Sicily 
and Andalusia, has she found willing recruits, except 
when she has taken them from the world at an early 
age, and exercised upon them her most potent spells. 
The Greek, the Armenian, the Lutheran, the Anglican 
churches, have ceased to fight against nature, though 
they are all inclined, perhaps, to assign some merit to 
a virgin life, and to desire a celibate condition for a 
section of their priests. In all these churches there is 
something like a balance of advantages in what is 
given and what is withheld. The position of a priest, 
of a monk, is one of high respect in the sight of men. 
The service to which he is called is noble and popular ; 
one conferring rank and power, the right to stand 
among the highest, to be exempted from labor, to be 
protected from violence, to be free of great houses, 
and to find a welcome at good men's feasts. The 
Shaker has none of these dignities, none of these 
pleasures to expect in return for his pledge of chastity ; 
in their stead, he has before him a daily task, coarse 
fare, and an ugly dress. 

Under a missionary like Khaled, we can imagine 
converts being made to the Shaker Church ; a man 
who oft'ered you a choice of either Shakerism or death, 
might be expected to bring proselytes to the fold ; but 
then, these believers have no Khaleds among them ; 
they employ no sword, they exercise no fascination of 
the tongue and pen. Where then do they find recruits ? 
Is the keen New Englander anxious to give up his will, 
his freedom, and his intellect, in exchange for a fixed 
belief, a daily drill, and a peasant's toil ? Is the rich 



SPIRITUAL CYCLES. 341 

Kew Yorker bent on stripping himself of his costly 
mansion, his splendid equipage, in favor of a coarse 
habit, a rood of land, and a narrow cell? Is the smart 
Iventuckyian ready to forswear his rank, his office, his 
ambition, for a. life of daily labor, abstinence, and 
care ? 

"No," said Elder Frederick, in one of my parting 
conversations, "not in ordinary times. In God's own 
time he must and will ; being then divinely touched 
and rapt, and acting in the spirit of a wisdom higher 
than the world. It is chiefly in our spiritual cycles 
that the elect are called." 

When the seasons come and go at their usual pace, 
when the air is still and the minds of men are tranquil, 
the rich New Yorker, the smart Kentuckyian, would 
no more dream of coming into union, than of going 
to live in a Pawnee wigwam or a negro shed. But in 
the day of spiritual wrath, when the vials are being 
opened on the land, when sinners run staggering up 
and down, when the colleges are mute, and the 
churches of the world stricken dumb, then heaven it- 
self comes forward into line, and, working through 
her unseen forces, draws to herself the rich, the daring, 
and the worldly spirit, as easily as a little child. In 
the hands of God, we are only as the potter's c\iiy. 
The strong will bends, the proud heart breaks, in His 
frown. It has been in the midst of these moral and 
spiritual commotions, that all the new creeds, all the 
new societies, of America have either risen or gathered 
strength ; not the poor Tunkers, the aggressive Mor- 
mons, the celibate Shakers only ; but the powerful 
Methodists, the prosperous Baptists, the rigid Presby- 
terians, the fervent Universalists. The Episcopal 
Church, and the Roman Church, may stand aloof; the 
educated and refining intellect of these elder branches 
29* 



342 NEW AMEBIC A. 

of the Christian society hokling that the teachings of 
Christ and His chosen apostles were final, that the age 
of miracle is past, and that the gospels are complete. 
The members of these great conservative churches 
may ask no day of an especial grace; they may doubt 
the origin, the effects, and the fruits of these periodical 
awal^:enings of the spirit. They may choose to walk 
in the old paths, to avoid novelties and eccentricities, 
to keep their flocks from excitements and illusions. 
But the younger rivals for dominion, acting, as they 
say, in the apostolic missionary spirit, have been prompt 
to seize upon all occasions of drawing souls into the 
Church. All the new sects and societies of America 
have wrought, and not without success, in this great 
field of conversion ; the Shakers in a spirit less eager 
and more confident than the rest. Other sects regard 
a revival as a movement in the mind inviting them to 
labor for the good of souls ; the Shakers look upon it 
as a Spiritual Cycle — the end of an epoch — the birth 
of a new society. Only in the fervor of a revival, says 
Elder Frederick, can the elect be drawn to God: — 
that is to say, in a Gentile phrase, drawn into a Shaker 
settlement. Mount Lebanon sprang from a revival ; 
Enfield sprang from a revival ; in fact, the Shakers 
declare that every large revival being the accomplish- 
ment of a Spiritual Cycle, must end in the foundation 
of a fresh Shaker union. 

Thus, it would appear that this wild and weird 
phenomenon in the religious kingdom, which some of 
our Gentile clergy deem an accident, an illusion, an- 
swering to no law of life, is to the Shakers the eftect 
of a special providence. Angels are employed upon the 
work. In the Shaker economy a revival has, there- 
fore, a place, a function, and a power. It is their time 
of vintage ; when the shoots, which they have not 



SPIRITUAL CYCLES. 343 

planted, bring them grapes, Avhen the presses, which 
they have not filled, yield them oil. They reckon on 
these periodical revivals as the husbandman reckons 
on the spring and fall; waiting for the increase which 
their spiritual cycles bring them, just as the farmers 
expect their hay-time and their harvest-home. 

When the last Ulster revival broke out, I happened 
to be in Derry; and, having watched the course of 
that spiritual hurricane from Derry to Belfast, I am 
able to say that, excepting the scenery and the man- 
ners, a revival in Ulster is very much the same thing 
as a spiritual cycle in Ohio and Indiana. 

In this country, the religious passion breaks out, like 
a fever, in the hottest places and in the wildest parts ; 
commonly on the frontiers of civilized states ; always 
in a sect of extreme opinions, generally among the 
Ranters, the Tunkers, the Seventh-day Baptists, the 
Come-outers, and the Methodists. 

Methodism, the large religion of America, if we may 
count the church by heads, was itself the offspring of 
a kind of revival. John Wesley had tried America, 
and failed; Whitfield had followed him, and succeeded; 
the time being more propitious to his work. The 
early preachers had won -their way, as the revivalist 
preachers still carry on the fight ; lodging roughly and 
faring coarsely ; tramping up muddy ridges, sleeping 
on leaves and deer-skins, tenting among wolves and 
beavers; suffering from the red men, from the mean 
whites, from the besotted negroes ; forcing their way 
into jails, gin-shops, and hells; searching out poverty, 
miserj', and crime. The revivalist is a fanatic, if you 
like the word ; he speaks from his hot blood, not from 
his cool head; his talk is a spasm, his eloquence a 
shriek; but while philosophers may smile and magis- 
trates may frown at his ravings, the swarthy miner, the 



344 . NEW AMERICA. 

lusty backwoodsman, the sturdy farmer and carter, 
confess to the power of his discourse. He does the 
rough work of the spirit which no other man could 
do. Trench would be tame, Stanley inaudible, in the 
prairie ; Wilberforce would faint, and ]S'oel would die, 
of a year on the forest skirt. 

Yet a camp-meeting, such as I have twice seen in 
the wilds of Ohio and Indiana, is a subject full of in- 
terest ; not without touches, in its humor and its 
earnestness, to unlock the fountains of our smiles and 
tears. The hour may be five in the afternoon of a 
windless October day ; when myriads of yellow flowers 
and red mosses light up the sward, when the leaves 
of the oak and the plane are deepening into brown, 
when the maples gleam with crimson, and the hickory 
drips with gold. Among the roots and boles of ancient 
trees, amidst buzzing insects and whirring birds, rise 
a multitude of booths and tents, with an aspect strange, 
yet homely ; for while this camp of religious zealots 
is utterly unlike the lodgments of an Arab tribe, of an 
Indian nation, of any true pastoral people on the 
earth, it has features which recall to your eye and ear 
the laughters and sounds of an English fair and an 
Irish wake. Epsom on a Derby day is not so unlike a 
revival camp in the woods as many think. Carts 
and wagons are unhorsed ; the animals tethered to the 
ground, or stra^'ing in search of grass. In a dozen 
large booths men are eating, drinking, smoking, pray- 
ing. Some fellows are playing games; some lolling 
on the turf; others are lighting fires ; many are cook- 
ing food. Those lads are cutting pines, these girls are 
getting water from the stream. In the centre of the 
camp, a pale rivivalist marabout, standing on the stump 
of a tree, is screeching and roaring to a wild, hot 
throng of listeners, most of them farmers and farmers' 



SPIRITUAL CYCLES. 345 

wives, from the settlements far and near; a sprinkling 
of negroes, in their dirty finery of shawl and petticoat ; 
a few red men in their paint and feathers : — all equally 
ablaze with the orator himself, fierce partners in his 
zeal and feeders of his fire. His periods are broken 
by shouts and sobs ; his gestures are answered by yells 
and groans. Without let, without pause, in his dis- 
course, he goes tearing on, belching forth a hurricane 
of words and screams ; while the men sit around him, 
white and still, writhing and livid, their lips all pressed, 
their hands all knotted, with the panic and despair of 
sin ; and the women rush wildly about the camp, toss- 
ing up their arms, groaning out their confessions, cast- 
ing themselves downward on the earth, swooning into 
sudden hysterics, straining at the eyes and foaming at 
the mouth ; the staid Indian looking with contempt 
on these miseries of the white man's squaw, and the 
negroes breaking forth into sobs, and cries, and con- 
vulsive raptures of "Glory! glory, Alleluja!" 

Many visitors fall sick, and some die in the camp. 
In the agonies of this strife against the power of sin 
and the fear of death (I am told by men who have 
often watched these spiritual tempests) the passions 
seem to be all unloosed, and to go astray without let 
or guide. "I like to hear of a revival," said to me a 
lawyer of Indianapolis ; " it brings on a crop of cases." 
In the revivalist camp m.en quarrel, and fight, and 
make love to their neighbors' wives. A Methodist 
preacher of twenty-five years' experience, first in ISTew 
England, then on the frontiers, afterwards on the 
battle-fields of Virginia, said to me, " Religious pas- 
sion include all other passions ; you cannot excite 
one without stirring up the others. In our Church we 
know the evil, and we have to guard against it as we 
may. The young men who get up revivals are always 



346 ^^W A3IEEICA. 

objects of suspicion to their elders; many go wrong, 
I would say one in twenty at the least; more, far more 
than that number bring scandal on the Church by their 
thoughtless behavior in the revivalist camps." 

In a week, in a month, perhaps, the fire of religious 
zeal may begin to flicker and lie down. Quarrels break 
out, and bowie-knives are drawn. The cynical laugh, 
the indiiierent drive away. Horses are now put up ; 
wagons are laden with baggage and women; the pub- 
lican strikes his tent ; and the riif-raft" goes in search 
of another field. One by one the brawlers are knocked 
ofi", until the marabout himself, disgusted with his 
hearers, ceases to give tongue. Then the last liorse 
is saddled, the last cart is on the road, and nothing 
appears to have been left of that singular camp but a 
few burnt logs, a desecrated wood, and two or three 
freshly-made graves. 

And is that all ? The Shaker says, No. In the fren- 
zies of that camp-meeting he detects a moral order, a 
spiritual beauty, utterly unseen by secular eyes. To 
him, a revival is God's own method of calling His 
children to Himself. Without a revival, there can be 
no resurrection on a large and inclusive scale : — and 
no revival, it is said by him, is ever quite wasted to 
the human race. Some soul is always drawn by it into 
the peace of heaven. 

Frederick told me that every great spiritual revival 
which has agitated America since his Church was 
planted, has led to a new society being founded on the 
principles of Mother Ann. The eighteen unions repre- 
sent eighteen revivals. According to Elder Frederick, 
who is watching with a keen and pitying eye the vag- 
aries of the new spiritualist movements in America, a 
nineteenth revival is now at hand, from the action of 
which he expects a considerable extension of his 
Church. 



SPIRITUALISM. 347 

CHAPTER XL VIII. 

SPIEITUALISM. 

During the past month of August, a crowd of Spi- 
ritualists has been holding conference in this pictu- 
resque port and peculiar city of Providence, Rhode 
Island. 

The disciples came in troups from the east and the 
west; some being delegates from circles and cities, 
representing thousands who stayed at home; still more 
being disciples who scorned either to admit any rule or 
to express any one's opinions save their own. Eighteen 
States and Territories were represented on the platform 
by accredited members ; more than half of them, it 
seems, by ladies. A first convention of Spiritualists, 
on a scale sutiiciently vast to be called national, was 
held two years ago at Chicago; a second was held one 
year ago at Philadelphia ; but in those two meetings, 
regarded by the zealous as experimental, the delegates 
came together less by choice than chance. Conven- 
ience of men and women, not moral significance, had 
ruled the selection of a place of meeting ; but Avhen a 
platform had been voted in Chicago, and a great appeal 
to the public had been made in Philadelphia, moral 
considerations came into play. The scene of the third 
National Convention of Spiritualists was fixed in this 
city, on account of the peculiar fame of Providence as 
a camp of heretics' and reformers, — the refuge of Roger 
"Williams, the home of religious toleration, the city of 
"What Cheer?" 

Quiet observers of the scene were struck with the 
wild and intellectual appearance of this cloud of wit- 



348 NSW AMEBIC A. 

nesses. Their eyes, I am told, were preternaturally 
bright ; their faces preternaturally pale. Many of them 
practised imposition of hands. Nearly all of the men 
wore long hair; nearly all the women were closely 
cropped. 

Pratt's Hall in Broad Street was engaged for the 
sittings : a capacious chamber, though not too large 
for the crowd of angels and of mortals who came 
pressing in. Yes, angels and mortals. Elderess An- 
toinette is not more certain that she sees and hears the 
dead than are all these hirsute men. In Broad Street, 
angels stood in the doorway, spectres flitted about the 
room. Their presence was admitted, their sympathy 
assumed, and their counsel sought. A dozen times the 
speakers addressed their words, not only to delegates 
present in the flesh, but to heavenly messengers who 
had come to them in the spirit. 

L. K. Joslin, a leader in the local circles, welcomed 
the delegates to this city of refuge, in their character 
of heretics and infidels. "To-day," he said, address- 
ing his mortal hearers, " the Spiritualists of the United 
States are the Great Heretics ; and, as such, the Spirit- 
ualists of Providence greet you with their welcome, 
believing that you are infidel to the old heresies that 
cursed rather than blessed our whole humanity." 
These words appear to have been oflicial; also what 
followed them, in reference to the celestial portion of 
his audience. "But not unto you alone," he said, 
with a solemn emphasis, "do we look for counsel, for 
inspiration, and the diviner harmonies. The congre- 
gation is greater than the seeming. There are others 
at the doors. Those of other ages, who were the 
morning lights to the world, fearless, true, and mar- 
tyred in the earth-life for their devotion to the truth — 
the cherished wise and good of the long-ago, and the 



SPIRITUALISM. 349 

loved ones of the near past — they will manifest their 
interest in, and favor with their presence, the largest 
body of individuals on this continent who realize 
their actualized presence and power. And unto them, 
as unto you, we give the greeting." Loud applause, 
not hushed and reverent, I am told, responded to this 
welcome of the heavenly delegates. 

John Pierpont, of Washington, an aged preacher 
(once a student of Yale College — the school of Amer- 
ican prophets), in yielding the chair which he had 
held at Philadelphia, spoke of the terra Infidel as ap- 
plied to himself and his brethren in the spirit. "I 
am infidel," he exclaimed, " to a great many of the 
forms of popular religion ; because I do not believe 
in many of the points which are held by a majority of 
the Christians, nay, even of the Protestant Church." 
He went on to say, that instead of putting his faith in 
creeds and canons, he put it in progress, liberty, and 
spirits. 

Ten days after Pierpont's delivery of this speech 
the old man died ; and in less than ten days after his 
funeral, Mrs. Conant, a Boston medium, who writes 
spirit messages for half the American public, an- 
nounced that she had got his soul back again in her 
drawing-room; a presence visible to her, sensible to 
some, audible to many. Charles Crowell and J. M, 
Peebles report that in their presence, Mrs. Conant fell 
into a spirit-trance, when the soul of John Pierpont 
passed into her (after the fashion set by Ann Lee), and 
spoke to them through her lips of that higher world 
into which he had just been raised. " It was evident," 
they say, " that some spirit was taking possession of 
her, for it portrayed its last earthly scene. The de- 
parture must have been very easy, for there was no 
struggle in the demonstration ; merely a few short 
30 



350 ^EW AMEBIC A. 

breathings, an earnest and steady gaze, and all was 
over. An effort was made to speak, and soon this 
immortal sentence was uttered : — 

" ' Blessed, thrice blessed, are the}' who die with a 
knowledge of the truth.' 

"After a slight pause, the spirit resumed : — 

^^ ^ Brothers aiid /Sisters, the problem is now solved 
with me. And because I live, you shall live also ; for 
the same divine Father and Mother that confers immor- 
tality upon one soul bestows the gift upon all.' " 

Pierpont would not seem to have made much pro- 
gress in celestial knowledge by the change from flesh 
to spirit; for while he was on earth he confined his 
arguments on spirit-rapping and spirit-writing very 
much to these forms: — "I have seen, and therefore I 
know; I have felt, and therefore I believe." It would 
seem to have struck Pierpont's spirit that his commu- 
nication might be regarded as unsatisfactory to his 
mortal friends, seeing how warm a curiosity impels 
many of them to inquire into the mysteries of a higher 
world ; and he spoke to Crowell and Peebles, through 
Mrs. Conant, in a tone of apology. "I regret," he is 
reported to have said, " that I caimot portray to you 
the transcendent beauty of the vision I saw just before 
I passed to the spirit-world. The glories of this new 
life are beyond description. Language would fail me 
should I attempt to describe them." Mortals had 
heard that language used before John Pierpont died. 

When Pierpont left the chair, Newman Weeks, of 
Vermont, was elected president for the year. Among 
the vice-presidents were several ladies : Mrs. Sarah 
Horton of Vermont, Mrs. Deborah Butler of New 
Jersey, Doctoress Juliette Stillman of Wisconsin. 

Warren Chase, of Illinois, one of the male vice- 
presidents, declares that more than three millions of 



SPIRITUALISM. 351 

Americans, men and women, have already entered 
into this movement. Three millions is a large figure ; 
no church in these States, not even the Methodist, can 
sum up half that number of actual members. The 
Spiritualists count in their ranks some eminent men ; 
shrewd lawyers, gallant soldiers, graceful writers ; 
with not a few persons who can hardly escape the sus- 
p)icion of being simply rogues and cheats. Still, the 
fact about them which concerns a student of the J^ew 
America most is their reported strength in numbers. 
A society of three million men and women would be 
formidable in any country ; in a republic governed by 
popular votes, they must wield an enormous force for 
either good or ill ; hence, one is not surprised on find- 
ing their leaders boast of having power to control the 
public judgments of America, not only as to peace 
and war, dogma and practice, but even on the more 
delicate questions of social and moral life. A fair 
and open field is not to be refused when hosts so 
mighty throw down wager of battle on behalf of what 
they hold to be true, however strange their faith may 
seem. 

These millions, more or less, of Spiritualists, an- 
nounce their personal conviction that the old religious 
gospels are exhausted, that the churches founded on 
them are dead, that new revelations are required by 
man. The}^ proclaim that the phenomena, now being 
produced in a hundred American cities — signs of 
mysterious origin, rappings by unknown agents, draw- 
ings by unseen hands ; phenomena which are com- 
monly developed in darkened rooms and under ladies' 
tables — ofter an acceptable ground-plan for a new, 
a true, and a final faith in things unseen. They have 
already their progressive lyceums, their catechisms, 
their newspapers ; their male and female prophets, 



352 NEW AMERICA. 

mediums, and clairvoyants; their Sunday services, 
their festivals, their picnic parties, their camp-meet- 
ings ; their local societies, their state organizations, 
their general conferences; in short, all the machinery 
of our most active, most aggressive societies. Their 
strength may be put too high by Warren Chace ; out- 
siders cannot count them, since they are not returned 
in the census as a separate body ; but the number of 
their lyceums, the frequency of their picnics, the cir- 
culation of their journals, are facts within the reach 
of some sort of veriiication. A man would hardly be 
wrong in assuming that a tenth part of the population 
in these New England States, a fifteenth part of the 
population of l^ew York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, lie 
open, more or less, to impressions from what they call 
the spirit-world. 

Some of these zealots urge a most ancient origin 
for their faith, while others maintain that they are a 
new people, blessed with an unworn revelation, a 
growth of the American soil, an exclusive property 
of the American church. They allude but seldom to 
the Shakers, from whom they seem to have derived 
nearly all their canons, with not a few of their prac- 
tices. They prefer to trace their origin to the visions 
of Andrew Jackson Davis and the happy audacities 
of Kate and Caroline Fox. A majority, perhaps, of 
the National delegates would have resented, as an in- 
jury to their country, any attempt to carry back the 
spiritual movement to an older source than the reve- 
lations of their own Poughkeepsie seer. 

Poughkeepsie, pronounced Po'keepsie, the Mecca, 
the Benares, the Jerusalem, of this new church, is a 
green, though busy and thriving town, lying at the 
foot of a picturesque bluff on the river Hudson, mid- 
way from Albany to New York. Seen from the river. 



SPIRITUALISM. 353 

the place is quaint and Swiss-like, with its quay, its 
rickety exchange. A bend in the stream, there five 
or six hundred yards in width, landlocks the river, so 
as to form, as it were, tw^o pretty lakelets ; the higher 
one backed by the CatskUl mountains, the lower one 
by the Hudson highlands. The nearer b-ank is bare 
and weird; with rock above and sci'ub below; but the 
western shore, a rolling ridge of hill, is bright with 
sycamore, beech, and oak. Schools, churches, col- 
leges abound in the city ; and among persons who 
have never been touched by unseen fingers, guns, car- 
pets, beer, and cotton, are mentioned as its produc- 
tions. Among the elect, the chief production of Po'- 
keepsie is a Seer. 

When Mother Ann had been lodged in the jail of 
this river town, she had gathered a little court of cu- 
rious people round her, to whom she communicated 
her strange experiences of the unseen world. An- 
drew Davis, the poor cobbler, is the spiritual descend- 
ant of Ann Lee, the poor factory girl. Davis sees 
signs and dreams dreams ; but his revelations have 
scarcely gone beyond the hints afforded by Mother 
Ann. In his trances, he declares that in dying, men 
only change their garments, that the spirits of the 
dead are about us everywhere, that sensitive persons 
can communicate with them. He asserts that medi- 
cines are useless and hurtful, and that all diseases 
may be cured by laying on of hands. He describes a 
new method of education, in which a sort of dancing 
with the arms and hands in Shaker fashion is largely 
introduced. He denounces the Christian Church as 
an institution of the flesh, the time of wdiieh has 
passed away, and he proposes in its stead a new and 
everlasting covenant of the spirit. 

Such are, in brief, the bases of what Newman 
30* 



354 yJ^W A ME BIG A. 

Weeks, Sarah Horton, Deborah Butler, and the asso- 
ciated brethren proclaimed in Pratt's Hall as that 
new covenant, which is to elevate man from the low- 
est earth into the highest heaven. Like Elder Fred- 
erick, they maintained the .dual nature of the God- 
head, assuming a female and a male essence — a 
Motherhood as well as Fatherhood in the Creator — 
and, like Sister Mary and Elderess Antoinette, they 
inferred from this duality of God the equal right and 
privilege of the sex on earth. Indeed, from first to 
last, the ladies seem to have played the leading parts 
in Providence, whether in exposition or in expostula- 
tion. There was much of both these articles. Miss 
Susie Johnson said she was tired of talk and wanted 
to work. " I am ready," cried the young reformer, 
"to work with any man or woman, or any commu- 
nity, that will show me the first practical step, by vir- 
tue of which we shall be laying the foundation of a 
higher morality, of a stricter integrity, of a better 
government, and, finally, of a higher destiny for the 
whole human race. I want to do something, and I 
want to see others who are ready to work. It is very 
much easier, I know, to pray for the salvation of man- 
kind than to work for it, and oftentimes you get very 
much more credit for praying than for working ; but 
it is not that I am after. I am sincerely devoted to 
the interests of the children of the coming genera- 
tion." 

Mrs. Susie Hutchinson was bolder still in rebuke 
of her brethren in the spirit. This lady, who repre- 
sented the Charleston Independent Society of Spirit- 
ualists in the Convention, said she had labored for 
eight years in the cause of Spiritualism, but had 
always been ashamed of her associates. The official 
report makes her say : " She had never met a whole- 



SPIRITUALISM. 355 

souled, noble Spiritualist yet, but she had hoped that 
there would be a class of people here who would 
show themselves worthy of being called men and. 
women. She had hoped that they w^ould pass resolu- 
tions that should be active, and not dead letters, going 
back to the buried past, and that they would find 
manhood and womanhood coming up to the work of 
humanity. If there was one single soul in the uni- 
verse to be shut out from the convention, she w^anted. 
to be shut out w^ith them. If there w^as a single per- 
son going to hell, she wanted to go with them; and if 
there w^as a work to be done in the lower regions, she 
would go and help the Eternal Father to do that 
work." 

Not a few of the delegates pretended to the posses- 
sion of miraculous powers ; to the gift of tongues, to 
spiritual insight, to the art of healing. Nearly all the 
adepts undertake to cure diseases by imposition (scof- 
fers say by very great imposition) of hands. In a cur- 
rent copy of " The Banner of Light," you may count 
a score of male and female — mostly female — medi- 
ums, who publicly advertise to cure diseases of every 
kind — for due amount of dollars — by spirit-agencies; 
a certain virtue being conveyed from the physician to 
her patient, by a movement of the hands, in imitation 
of the apostolic rite. These announcements of the 
healing mediums are often curious and suggestive. 
Among lesser lights in these circles, Mrs. Eliza Wil- 
liams, a sister of Andrew Jackson Davis, announces 
that she will "examine and prescribe for diseases and 
cure the sick by her healing powers, which have been 
fully tested." Mrs. S. J. Young advertises herself as 
a business and medical clairvoyant ; Mrs. SpafFord as 
a trance-test medium ; Mrs. H. S. Seymour as a busi- 
ness and test-medium. Some of these advertisements 



356 ^^W A3IERICA. 

are full of mystery to the carnal mind. Mrs. Spencer 
undertakes to cure chills and fevers by her " positive 
and negative powders," adding, "for the prevention 
and cure of cholera this great spiritual medicine 
should be always kept on hand." Dr. Main, who 
dates from the Health Institute, requests those per- 
sons who may wish to have his opinion, to " enclose a 
dollar, a postage-stamp, and a lock of hair." Mrs 
R. Collins "still continues to heal the sick in Pint 
Street." Madam Gale, clairvoyant and test-medium, 
"sees spirits and describes absent friends." Mrs. H. 
B. Gillette, electric, magnetic, healing, and developing 
medium, " heals both body and mind." But Mrs. Gil- 
lette appears to be distanced by Dr. George Emerson, 
who announces a "new development of spirit-power." 
This medium is " developed to cure diseases by draw- 
ing the disease into himself;" and he advertises that 
he is ready to perform this miracle of spirit-art by let- 
ter, at any distance, for ten dollars. In some respects, 
however, the ladies make a bolder show of might than 
anything yet assumed by the rougher sex. Mrs. S. 
W. Gilbert, describing herself as a Dermapathist, not 
only oft'ers to cure disease, but to teach the art of 
curing it — in so many lessons, at so much a lesson ! 

A tone of stern hostility towards the religious creeds 
and moral standards of all Christian nations marked 
the speeches of men and women throughout this Con- 
vention ; a tone which is hardly softened by a word in 
the oilicial reports. 

Miss Susie Johnson said, she for one would build 
no more churches, " for they had already too long 
oppressed and benighted humanity." 

Mr. Andrew Foss "thanked God this was not an 
age of worship, but of investigation." 

Dr. H. T. Child said that " Spiritualism has bridged 



SPIRITUALISM. 357 

the gulf between Abraham's bosom and the rich man's 
hell. Let thanksgiving be added to thanksgiving for 
every blow that is struck to weaken the superstruc- 
ture of human law — law which, by the hand of man, 
punishes man for doing wrong," 

Mr. Perry said, "As a Spiritualist, I have yet to 
learn that we hold anything as sacred; and I am op- 
posed to any resolution that has the word sacred in it." 

Mr. Finney said, " The old religion is dying out. 
We are here to represent this new religion, born of 
the Union and of the types of humanity in a cosmo- 
politan geograph}'', the die of which was cast in the 
forges of Divine Providence." 

This was, in fact, the substance of what was said in 
presence of the assembled delegates, mortal and celes- 
tial, at the third l^ational Convention. 

These resolutions were adopted, which the Spirit- 
ualists consider as of great importance. The first was, 
to oppose the teaching of Sunday-schools, and to sub- 
stitute for it that of their own progressive lyceums : 
the second, to procure the writing of a series of essays 
on Spiritualism : the third, to discountenance the use 
of tobacco and strong drinks. A proposal to found a 
National Spiritual College was ordered to stand over 
for discussion next year. One resolution, of no imme- 
diate importance, showed how broad an action might 
be taken by these Spiritualists on the political field, if 
they should gain in strength of numbers and in unity 
of purpose. It referred to the Labor question, and 
ran as follows : 

" Resolved, That the hand of honest labor alone 
holds the sovereign sceptre of civilization ; that its 
rights are commensurate with its character and im- 
portance ; and hence, that it should be so fully and 
completely compensated as to furnish to the toiling 



358 NEW AMEBIC A. 

millions ample means, times, and opportunities for 
education, culture, refinement, and pleasure ; and that 
equal labor, whether performed by men or women, 
should receive equal compensation." 

These reformers pay no respect to our Old World 
notions of political science. 

When we essay to judge a system so repugnant to 
our feelings, so hostile to our institutions as this school 
of Spiritualism, it is needful — if we would be fair in 
censure — to remember that, strange as it may seem 
to on-lookers, it has been embraced by hundreds of 
learned men and pious women. Such a fact will ap- 
pear to many the most singular part of the movement; 
but no one can assert that a theory is sim.ply foolish, 
beneath the notice of investigators, which has been 
accepted by men like Juge Edmonds, Dr. Hare, Elder 
Frederick, and Professor Bush. 



CHAPTER XLIX. 

FEMALE SEERS. 

In this learned, bright, and picturesque city of Bos- 
ton, the home of Agassiz, Longfellow, Holmes, and 
Lowell, there has risen up a branch of the female 
priesthood of America, which puts forward a claim to 
regulate science, to supersede induction, and to lay 
down a new method. The women are Female Seers. 

These priestesses, who may be called Elizabethans, 
from the name of their founder and hierophant, Eliza- 
beth Denton, are not, properly speaking, a church; 
hardly, indeed, a sect ; and certainly not a learned 
society. Perhaps they may be called a school ; since 



FEMALE SEERS. 359 

they profess to have everything to learn and every- 
thing to teach. Like most other branches of the 
great Spiritualist family, they live in the world, of 
which they enjoy the pleasures and covet the distinc- 
tions with unflagging zest. On Boston Common, 
they are undistinguishable by outward signs from the 
world of ordinary people (if, in truth, it can be said 
that on Boston Common there are any ordinary 
people). Their mark is that of an inward, intellectual 
gift; the peculiar power of these Female Seers being 
the ability to read into the very heart of mill-stones. 

Obeying the common law of these new societies, the 
school of Elizabeth is a female school, with ladies for 
its prophets and interpreters. Men may become 
members of the school, may share in its riches, help 
to propagate its gospels; but no male creature has 
ever yet dared to assert his possession of its miracu- 
lous gifts. 

In our new philosophy, superior gifts depend on 
superior organization. Man, with his coarser grain, 
his harder fibre, his duller spirit, is unequal to the 
flights and ecstasies of the nobler sex. In ISTew York 
idiom, man has been played out, and woman must 
have her turn. 

Anne Cridge began it. Anne Cridge is a sister of 
William Denton, of Boston, a person of some conse- 
quence here — for a man; a student, a geologist, a 
collector, one Avho can chop logic and quote authori- 
ties in defence of the doings of his school. The new 
Gospel of the Female Seers came to Anne Cridge and 
her brother William in this odd manner. Buchanan, 
a doctor in Cincinnati, had noticed in his practice, 
that some persons can be purged without pills and 
doses, simply by being made to hold the cathartic 
medicine in their hands. It was an act of the imagfi- 



360 NEW AMERICA. 

nation ; not to be expected from every one, perhaps, 
but certainly to be found in some, especially in females 
of delicate genius and of sensitive frame. "Why not 
in Anne Cridge ? The delicate genius, the sensitive 
frame, were hers by nature and not by choice. A 
trial was made. I^Tow, a fancy that could supply the 
place of a bolus, should be capable of higher service 
than purging the body of its viler humors ; and Avith a 
sly feminine frankness, Anne tried her powers of see- 
ing through obstacles on some of her friends' un- 
opened letters. The gift soon grew upon her. Putting 
a sealed paper to her temples, she perceived traces 
upon it, not with her eyes, but with her brain, of the 
figure of a man Avriting, — the figure of a man who 
had written that paper, — so that she could tell his 
height, his color, and the shape of his eyes. A thought 
now struck her brother. This image of a man writing 
must be a sun-picture, which had been thrown upon 
the paper as upon a lens. He could not himself see 
it; only his sister Anne could see it; but this defect 
of vision was a consequence of his grosser qualities of 
mind. Denton lacked imagination. Still, it was made 
clear to him that Nature must be in the daily habit of 
multiplying pictures of herself; that every surface 
must receive and may retain such pictures ; and that 
you only want a seer capable of reading them, in 
order to arrive at Nature's innermost secrets. It was 
a fine idea ; Denton thought the beginning of a new 
era : for if Anne, by pressing a piece of paper against 
her forehead, could find on it the figure of its writer, 
with an outline of the room in which it had been 
folded and sealed, why should she not be able to read 
the images which must have been pictured on all other 
surfaces; on flints, on bones, on shells, on metals? 
Why not? If the images mirrored on all substances 



FEMALE SEERS. 361 

by light, are not, as we fancy, transient, but remain 
upon them, sinking into them, it is simply a question 
of test — of an agent sensitive enough to perceive and 
recover these vanishing lines. Such an agent Denton 
had found in his sister Anne. 

Having found his reader of Nature, all the past life 
of the world would be opened to him, as one great 
fragment of time is to the "Wandering Jew, with the 
added advantage that he could go further back in 
time and could read the things which no human eyes 
had ever seen : to wit, if his theory were true, you 
would duly need to break a piece of rock from the 
Matterhorn, wrap it in paper, and place it against the 
reader's brow, in order to learn, as from the pages of 
a book, the story of the glaciers, from the age when 
Switzerland and Swabia were fields of ice, through 
the melting periods, down to the day when forest, 
lake, town, vineyard, laughed upon the scene ; to 
scratch a flint from the limestone quarries of the 
White Mountain, and you would find engraved upon 
it pictures of the primeval forest, of the Indian camp, 
the red-skins in their paint and feathers, brandishing 
their spears, and tossing in their war-dance ; to pick 
a bit of lava from a vault in Pompeii, and you would 
obtain a map of the Italian city, with its houses, gar- 
dens, baths and circuses, its games, its festivals, its 
civic and religious life ; to chip a scale from the tower 
of Seville, and you would instantly restore the old 
Moorish life of that proud city, with its ensigns and 
processions, its dusk population, its gleaming cres- 
cents and heroic pomp of war ; to snatch a bone from 
a heap of sailors' ballast lying on the quays, and may- 
hap you would have pictured on this fossil the con- 
dition of England thousands of years before Caesar 
sailed from the Somme, with portraits of the savages 
31 



362 NEW AMEBIC A. 

who fished, and fought, and fed goats and sheep on 
our shores and downs. If the theory were only true, 
a new light had dawned upon the world ; history had 
obtained a great supplement, science a new basis, art 
a fresh illustration. 

But Anne, the first Female Seer, now found a rival 
in this art of reading stones in Elizabeth Denton, her 
brother's wife. It may be that Elizabeth was jealous 
of Anne passing day after day in her husband's study, 
even though it were only among books, bones, skins, 
and ores, gazing with him into the mysteries of life, 
while she herself was sent out into the nursery and 
the kitchen. In her eyes, it is probable that in such 
services to science one woman would seem to be as 
good as another — in her own case a great deal better. 
Certain it is, that she one day told her husband that 
she, too, was a Female Seer, able and willing to look 
for him into the soul of things. Denton tried her 
with a pebble, which she instantly read oft' in a fashion 
to extinguish the modest pretensions of sister Anne. 
In the published list of experiments, we are told that 
a piece of limestone from Kansas, full of small fossil 
shells, was held by Anne Cridge against her brow, 
when she read off": "A deep hole here. "What shells! 
small shells; so many. I see water; it looks like 
a river running along." The next experiment was 
tried upon Elizabeth : a bit of quartz from Panama 
being held before her eyes: "I see what looks like a 
monstrous insect; its body covered with shelly wings, 
and its head furnished with antennae nearly a foot 
long. It stands with its head against a rock. . . . 
I see an enormous snake coiled up among wild, wiry 
grass. The vegetation is tropical." "Well done," 
cried Denton. 

Proud of the gifts so suddenly displayed by his 



FEMALE SEERS. 363 

wife, he annonneed that a new science had been seen, 
a new interpretation of the past revealed, and opening 
a fresh page in the great book of nature, he wrote 
down the word Psychometry, by which he meant the 
Science of the Soul of things. Of course^ being only 
a male, he cannot show this soul to others; he does 
not affect to see it for himself. He is privileged 
through his sister and his wife. But being a man of 
letters and ideas, he has shaped out the new mystery 
of the universe in these surprising terms: — 

"In the world around us radiant forces are passing 
from all objects to all objects in their vicinity, and 
during every moment of the day and night are daguer- 
reotying the appearances of each upon the other; the 
images thus made not merely resting upon the surface, 
but sinking into the interior of them ; there held with 
astonishing tenacity, and only waiting for the suitable 
application to reveal themselves to the inquiring gaze. 
You cannot, then, enter a room by night or day, but 
you leave on going out, your portrait behind you. 
You cannot lift your hand, or wink your eye, or the 
wind stir a hair of your head, but each movement is 
infallibly registered for coming ages. The pane of 
glass in the window, the brick in the wall, and the 
paving-stone in the street, catch the pictures of all the 
passers-by, and faithfully preserve them. ]^ot a leaf 
waves, n.ot an insect crawls, not a ripple moves, but 
each motion is recorded by a thousand faithful scribes 
in infallible and indelible scripture." 

It is a pity that men are not allowed to see these 
pictures, to read these histories, of our globe. But 
the male vision is dull, the male mind prosaic. Only 
the female sense can peer into these solid depths. It 
is rather hard upon us ; but whose fault is it if man's 
grosser nature cannot soar to these feminine heights? 



364 ^^W AMEBIC A. 

Growing by what it feeds on, the mysterious faculty 
in Elizabeth Denton has left that of Anne Cridge 
immeasurably behind. She has acquired the gift of 
looking, not into flints and fossils only, but into the 
depths of the sea, into the centre of the earth. She 
can hear the people of past times talk, she can taste 
the food which sanrians and crustaceans scrunched in 
the pre-diluvian world. 

From these Female Seers we have learned that men 
were once like monkeys ; that even then the women 
were in advance of men ; being less hairy and standing 
more erect than their male companions. It is coming 
to be always thus, when the story of man's life is told 
by a properly qualified female saint and seer. 



CHAPTER L. 

EQUAL RIGHTS. 

"Are you a member of the Society for Promoting 
Equal Rights, as between the two sexes?" I asked a 
young married lady of my acquaintance in New York. 
"Certainly not," she replied with a quick shrug of the 
shoulders. "Why not?" I ventured to say, pursuing 
my inquiry. "Oh," she answered, with a sly little 
laugh, "you see I am very fond of being taken care 
of." Were it not for this unfortunate weakness on the 
part of many ladies, the Society for Promoting Equal 
Rights would soon, I am told, comprise the whole 
female population of these states, especially of these 
]S"ew England states ! 

The reform which ladies like Betsey Cowles, Lucy 
Stone, and Lucretia Mott, would bring about by way 



EQUAL BIGHTS. 365 

of equalizing the rights of sex and sex, would give to 
woman everything that society allows to men, from 
pantaloons and latch-keys up to seats in the legislature 
and pulpits in the church. In assertion of female rights, 
Harriet ISToyes and Mary Walker have taken to panta- 
lettes ; Elizaheth Staunton has offered herself as a can- 
didate for the representation of N'ew York ; and Olym- 
pia Brown has been duly ordained as a minister of the 
gospel. 

When the first Female Congress was called in Ohio, 
under Presidentess Betsey Cowles, the ladies, after 
much reading and speaking, adopted twenty-two 
resolutions, with a preample echoing the form of the 
Declaration of Independence : — 

" Whereas all men are created equal, a id endowed 
with certain God-given rights, and all just i';overnment 
is derived from the consent of the governed ; And 
whereas the doctrine that man shall pursue his ^wn 
substantial happiness, is acknowledged by the highest 
authority to be the great precept of nature; And 
whereas this doctrine is not local but universal, being 
dictated by God Himself: Wherefore . . . ." 

Then come the resolutions, which take the form of 
an open declaration, that the ladies of Ohio shall in 
fature consider the laws which, in their opinion, press 
unfairly on the sex, as of no efi'ect and void. 

"1. Resolved: That all laws contrary to these fun- 
damental principles, or in conflict with this great pre- 
cept of nature, are of no binding obligation. 

"2. Resolved : That all laws which exclude women 
from voting are null and void. 

"3. Resolved: That all social, literary, pecuniary, 
and religious distinctions between man and woman 
are contrary to nature. 

"9. Resolved: That it is unjust and unnatural to 
31* 



366 ^^^'»^' AMERICA. 

hold a different moral standard for men and for 
women." 

Lydia Pierson put her foot down on what she held 
to be the true cause of female inferiority : the habit 
among girls of marrying early in life. Lydia told her 
audience that, if they wanted to be men they must 
stay at school until they were twenty-one. 

Massachusetts — the true leader in every movement 
of opinion — now took up the question, and the first 
National Woman's Rights Convention was held in 
Worcester, with Paulina Davis, of Rhode Island, Pre- 
sidentess, and Hannah Darlington, of Pennsylvania, 
Secretary. 

Paulina described the object of that female parlia- 
ment to be — an epochal movement, the emancipation 
of a class, the redemption of half the world, the re- 
organization of all social, political, and industrial 
interests and institutions. She said, This is the age of 
peace, and woman is its sign. The Congress voted the 
following resolutions. 

" That every human being of full age, who has to 
obey the law, and who is taxed to support the govern- 
ment, should have a vote : 

" That political rights have nothing to do with sex, 
and the word 'male' should be struck out of all our 
state constitutions : 

"That the laws of property, as affecting married 
persons, should be revised, so as to make all the laws 
equal ; the wife to have during life an equal control 
over the property gained by their mutual toil and sacri- 
fices, to be heir of her husband to the extent that he is 
her heir, and to be entitled at her death to dispose by 
will of the same share of the joint property as he is." 

Other resolutions declared the right of women to a 
better education than they now enjoy, to a fair partner- 



EQUAL RIGHTS. S67 

ship with men in trade and adventure, and to a share 
in the administration of justice. A male listener said 
he liked the spirit of this female parliament, since he 
found they meant by woman's rij^hts the right of every 
lady to be good for something in life ! 

One topic of discourse in this Congress was Dress. 
It would hardly be outstripping facts to say that the 
husk and shell, so to speak, of every question now 
being raised for debate in America, as between sex 
and sex, belongs to the domain of the milliner and the 
tailor. What are the proper kinds of clothes for a free 
woman to fold about her limbs? Is the gown a final 
form of dress ? Is the petticoat a badge of shame-?. Does 
a man owe nothing to his hat, his coat, his pantaloons, 
his boots ? In short, can a female be considered as 
equal to a male until she has won the right to wear his 
garb ? Queries such as these have a serious as well as 
comic side. Feminine science is so far advanced in 
these countries, that many a topic which would be 
food for jokes and poesies in London, is treated here 
as a question of business would be considered in a 
Broadway store. 

Now, dress, if j^ou consider it apart from the rules 
of Hyde Park and Fifth Avenue, denotes something 
other than the personal taste of its wearer. Dress is 
the man ; and something more. Dress not only tells 
3'ou what a man does, but what he is. Watch the tide 
of life, as it flows and surges through the Broadwa}'', 
past the Park, the Battery, and the Quays, and you 
will see that the preacher has one costume, the post- 
man another, the sailor a third ; that a man of easy 
habit clothes himself in a garb which a man of swift 
and decisive movements could not wear. A flowing 
garment impedes the owner ; a man or woman in skirts 
cannot run like a fellow in pantaloons. 



368 ^^W AMERICA. 

Helene Marie Weber was one of the first to don coat 
and trousers, and her assumption of male attire was a 
cause of loud explosions. Helene, besides being a 
writer on reform, on female education, and on dress, 
was a practical farmer, who ploughed land, sowed 
corn, reared pigs, and went to market with her prod- 
uce, habited like a man, in boots, breeks, and but- 
tons. Apart from this fanc3% she is described as a 
strictly pious and lady-like person, modest in mien, 
unassuming in voice. In a letter which she wrote to 
the Ladies' Congress, she mentions that she had been 
abused in the English and American papers for wear- 
ing trousers; she declares that she has no desire to be 
an Tphis ; that she never affected to be other than a 
woman, and has never been mistaken for a man ex- 
cept by some hasty stranger. Her common garb she 
describes as consisting of a coat and pants of black 
cloth ; her evening dress as a dark blue coat with gilt 
buttons, buft" cassimere vest, richly trimmed, with gold 
buttons, and drab breeches. She adds, with a sweet 
feminine touch, that all her clothes are made in Paris! 

Many of the points to which these ladies lent their 
countenance were of serious import : others were only 
noticeable for the comedy to which the}- gave birth. 
I have heard that a deputation of ladies in one of these 
New England towns went up to their minister's house 
to protest against the commencement of the daily les- 
sons with the words, "Dearly beloved brethren," as 
implying that the women were either not present or 
counted for nothing in the congregation. They wished 
to have their pastor's views on a project for amending 
the Book of Common Prayer. " "Well, I have thought 
over that matter, ladies," said the preacher; "but I 
think, on the whole, this text may stand ; for you see 
the bretbree alwavs embrace the sisters." 



EQUAL RIGHTS. 369 

The more serious question discussed in the Equal 
Eights Association is the position of woman in mar- 
riage. " Tlie whole theory of the common law," they 
saj', "in relation to the married woman, is unjust and 
degrading." What, they ask, are the natural relations 
of one sex to the other? Is marriage the highest and 
purest form of those relations ? What are the moral 
effects of marriage upon man and wife ? Is marriage 
a lioly state ? 

Any appeal to the code for guidance on such ques- 
tions would be idle ; for the rule under which we live 
has no reply to make in matters of moral and religious 
truth. The Institutes, Pagan alike in origin and in 
spirit, consider a woman as little more than a chattel ; 
and the relation of husband and wife as only a trifle 
more advanced than that of a master and his slave. 
They see no moral beauty in the state of marriage ; 
see nothing in it beyond a partnership in family busi- 
ness, akin to that which exists in a trading firm. JSTo 
Roman ever dreamt of love being divine, of marriage 
being a union of two souls ; and this Gothic sentiment, 
so common in our poetry, in our traditions, in our 
households, finds no food whatever in the civil law. 
Hence it has come to pass in America, that every sect 
of social reformers — Moravian, Tunker, Shaker, Per- 
fectionist, Mormon, Spiritualist — has commenced its 
cfl:brts towards a better life by discarding and denoun- 
cing the civil law. 

That the state of marriage is the highest, most 
poetic, most religious stage of the social relations, is 
denied by few, even in America. It is denied by some. 
The Moravians and Tnnkers treat the institution with 
a certain shyness; not denying that for carnal persons 
it is a good and profitable state ; but aiiecting to be- 
lieve that it is not holy, not conducive to the highest 



370 ^£W A3IERICA. 

virtue. The Shakers, we have seen, repudiate marriage 
altogether, as one of those temporal institutions which 
have done their appointed otHce on this earth, and 
have now passed away, so far, at least, as concerns 
the elected children of grace. 



CHAPTER LI. 

THE HARMLESS PEOPLE. 

The Tunkers, who say they came into America from 
a small German village on the Eder, all from one little 
dorf, owe the name by which thej^ are known, not only 
here, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, about which they 
are largely settled, but in Boston and !N"ew York — to 
a pun. They profess Baptist tenets; and the word 
"tunker" meaning to dip a crumb into gravy, a sop 
into wine, they are described by those who use it, in 
a very poor joke, as dippers and sops. They are also 
called Tumblers, from one of the abrupt motions which 
they m^ake in the act of baptism. We English style 
them Bunkers, by mistake. Among themselves they 
are known as Brethren ; the spirit of their association 
being that of fraternal love. The name by which they 
are known in the neighborhood of their villages in 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, is that of the Harm- 
less People. 

Under any and every name, they are a sober, pious, 
and godly race; leavening with a simple virtue the 
mighty fermentations going forward on the American 
soil. 



THE HAMRLESS PEOPLE. 371 

These Tnnkers live in little villages and groups of 
farms, for their common comfort and advantage; but 
not in separate communities, like the Shakers and 
Perfectionists. They remain in the world, subject to 
the law. In some respects, they may be considered as 
in a state of change, even of decay; for, in these later 
days, they have begun to take interest on money lent, 
once strictly forbidden among them ; and they have 
commenced to build chapels and churches instead of 
confining their religious services, like the ancient Jews, 
to houses and sheds. In some of these chapels, I am 
sorry to say, there is even a hint at decoration ; but 
with these slight drawbacks, the Tnnkers are true to 
the practices of their faith, of which these brief par- 
ticulars may be given. 

They are said to believe that all men will be saved; 
a dogma which is common to almost every new sect 
in the United States ; though some of their body deny 
that universal salvation is held as a binding article of 
their creed. They dress in plain clothes, and use none 
but the simplest forms of address. They swear no 
oaths. They make no compliments. They will not 
fight. They wear long beards, and never go to law. 
In their worship they employ no salaried priest. Males 
and females are considered equals, and the two sexes 
are alike eligible for the diaconate. Every man in a 
congregation is allowed to rise (as in the Jewish syna- 
gogue) and expound the text; the man who proves 
himself ablest to teach and preach is put in the minis- 
ter's place ; but the people pay him in respect, not in 
dollars, for his service. Like Peter and Paul on their 
travels, the Tunker apostles may be lodged with their 
brethren, and even helped on. their way with food and 
gifts ; but in theory and practice they accept no fees, 
even when they happen to be poor and unable to leave 



372 J^EW AMERICA. 

for a week, for a month, without loss, their little 
patches of ground. These unpaid preachers wait upon 
the sick, comfort the dying, bury the dead. They 
have also to marry young men and maids; a few, 
not many, of the more carnal spirits ; a duty which is 
often the most troublesome part of their daily toils. 

For the Tunkers, like the Essenes, whom they re- 
semble in many strong points, have peculiar views 
about the holiness of a single life ; holding celibacy in 
the highest honor; and declaring that very few persons 
are either gifted or prepared for the married state. 
They do not refuse to bind any brother and sister who 
may wish to enter into that bond to each other; but 
they make no scruple about pointing out to them, in 
long and earnest discourse, the superior virtues of a 
single life. The preacher does not say that matrimony 
is a crime ; he only hints a profound dislike to it ; 
treating it as one of those evil things from which he 
would willingly guard his flock. 

When a brother and sister come to him wanting to 
be made one flesh, he looks down upon them as sin- 
ners who ought to be questioned and probed as to 
their secret thoughts ; and, if it may be, delivered by 
him through grace from a terrible snare. He alarms 
them by his inquisition, he frightens them by his 
prophecies. In his words and in his looks he conveys 
to their minds the idea that in wanting to be married 
they are going headlong to the devil. It is not easy 
to say what the object of these Harmless People may 
be in opposing the tendency of their folks to love and 
marry ; for the Tunkers are shy of publication and 
explanation ; but it is open to conjecture that their 
motives may be partly physiological, partly religious. 
A wise man, who could have his way in every city of 
the world, would put an end to all marriages of de- 



THE HARMLESS PEOPLE. 373 

formed and idiotic persons ; on the same lines of 
justification, a Tunker might dissuade from marriage 
a pair of lovers who could do nothing to improve the 
race. But some mystic dream, about chastity being a 
h.o\y state, acceptable as such to God, and meritorious 
in the eyes of men, has more to do with it, I think, 
than any consideration they may have for improve- 
ments in the Tunker breed. 

Of course, the Tunker body is not the first pro- 
fessing Christian Church which has felt it a duty to 
encourage people to live a single life, though the fact 
of such encouragement may be considered as having a 
meaning in that country, where every child is a fortune, 
which it never can have had m Europe and in Asia, 
where t-he separation of a great many mon-ks and 
anchorites from the reproducing classes may have 
been justified on economical, if not on moi-al, grounds. 

In the Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Rome, 
the question of whether celibacy was or was not a holy 
state, was mooted long and freely, for apostles could 
be quoted on either side in the dispute, and the teach- 
ers, each according to his argument, might cite on 
this side the example of Peter, on that side the precept 
of Paul. The sentiment in favor of living a single 
life did not come from Paul, much less from Christ ; 
it had sprung up among the Essenic farms and villages 
of Judea ; had spread from the hill-side into the city 
and the schools; had become popular among the 
Pharisees, as a protest against the flesh and the devil ; 
and, in this sense only, it appears to have been adopted 
by the ascetic Saul. After his conversion to a new 
creed, Paul, being a man of mature age, going to and 
fro in the world on his Master's work, was unlikely to 
change his habits. The spirit of the Essene was 
Btrong in Paul, but in pleading for chastity of the 
32 



374 NEW AMEBIC A. 

body, as a condition acceptable to God, it should not 
be hastily assumed that he set up his voice, even by 
implication, against God's own ordinance of marriage. 
Those only who have studied the social life of Corinth 
under Junius Gallio, — a sink of vice, appalling even 
to men most knowing in the ways of degenerate 
Greece, — can guess what may have been the apostle's 
motive for advising his disciples in that city to observe 
a more ascetic rule than any which they saw in vogue 
around them; but any man of sense may judge from 
the sacred text how far a special state of morals, 
special even among the Greeks, must have driven St. 
I'aul into urging upon the Church of Corinth a true 
and resolute watchfulness over matters not otherwise 
recommended by him to the infant church. When 
he says to them, he would to God they were as he is, 
he speaks (if I read him rightly) as a chaste man 
rather than as a single man. How could an apostle 
of such practical and commanding genius as St. Paul 
conceive the idea of banishing marriage from the new 
society ? Three reasons forbid it, any one of which 
would have been strong enough to deter him : (first) 
because Elohim, the God of his fathers, had instituted 
marriage for Adam and all his seed ; (second) because 
Paul knew, and said, that if men do not marry, they 
will do much worse; and (third) because the rule of 
abstinence, if it could have been enforced by him, 
would have destroyed in one generation all his con- 
verts, and with them, perhaps, the very Church of 
Christ. 

Have we any right to infer from Paul's advice to 
the Corinthians, that he held the views of Ann Lee, 
or even of Alexander Mack? Greece was not Amer- 
ica; the Syrian Aphrodite is not worshipped in New 
York. St. Paul had to urge the merits of chastity on 



THE HARMLESS PEOPLE. 375 

a people to whom that word, and all that it expresses, 
were unknown. His converts had been Avorshippers 
of Astarte, and in denouncing their abominations, he 
used the fiery freedom of a man whose life was pure 
aad stainless. Yet he weighed his words, and in the 
tempest of his wrath took time to say, when he spoke 
in his own name only, as a private man, and when he 
delivered counsel in the name of our Lord. The 
Greeks understood him. Writing in their idiom, 
speaking of their manners, both well known to him — 
child of a Greek cit}^ pupil in a Greek school — hia 
meaning must have been clearer to them than it is to 
strangers. Hence the Greek church may be taken as 
a safer guide to the sense of a difficult and contested 
passage than any other, especially than that of the 
American Tunker. The Greek church has no doubt 
about it. By many canons and by constant usage, 
that church affirms that St. Paul was in favor of wed- 
lock, not in the communicant only, but in the priest. 

Unhappily for Christian unity, the Western church 
took another view of the text. The Pauline and 
Platonic Fathers wrote in mystical phrases of the 
superior sanctity of an unmarried life ; and long before 
any law of the church had come to forbid priest and 
bishop to marry, it had become a fashion among the 
higher clergy to abstain, and to live, as they phrased 
it, for the church alone. Strange to say, this fashion 
took root in Rome, in the midst of a people boasting 
as their chief glorj', of having had for their founder 
and bi-shop St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, a married 
man. 

The adoption of this celibate principle by Rome 
was the germ of both the great schisms in the Christian 
society ; first, of a parting between East and "West, 
afterwards, in the West itself, of a parting between 



376 N-EW AMEBIC A. 

ITorth and South, Disputes about dogma may be set 
aside ; disputes about social order may not. A priest 
can be persuaded to hear reason on such topics as 
election and foreknowledge, who cannot be induced 
to admit that marriage is a state of sin. In the sixth 
and seventh centuries this battle of celibacy had been 
fiercely fought, the Petrine church being for it, the 
Pauline church against it; and on this rock of contra- 
dictions, the first great Christian society had struck 
and split. The Council of Tours had suspended for a 
year all priests and deacons who were then found 
living with their wives, of whom there were many 
thousands in Italy, Gaul, and Spain. The Council of 
Constantinople had declared that priests and deacons 
ought to live with their wives like laymen, according 
to the ordinance and custom of the apostles, a canon 
which they still observe. Not only did the Greek 
Church separate from that of Rome on this cardinal 
policy, but the clergy and laity of the "West and 
l^orth — of England, Germany, and France — stood 
out against it; and the main efforts of the Roman 
church for five hundred years were given to this 
domestic question. Ages elapsed before Rome had 
crushed the opposition to her policy in England, Ger- 
many, and France, in which countries married priests 
were to be found so late as the times of the Black 
Prince : at length she won her cause ; but on the 
morrow of her triumph the Reformation began. 

No man can read the ballads and chronicles from 
Piers Ploughman's Complaint to Pecock's Repressor, 
witliout feeling how much it was beyond the power 
of a celibate clergy to dwell in peace with a congre- 
gation of Gothic race. The cry for a married priest- 
hood rose from every corner of the West and North ; 
and when the clerical reformers took the field ao^ainst 



THE HARMLESS PEOPLE. 377 

Rome, the first pledge of their sincerity, given and 
taken, was to marry wives. All the great men who 
led the Reformation in their several countries — Lu- 
ther, Calvin, Cranmer — had to give this pledge of 
their faith; thus the newly-made Christian societies 
of North and West, to which America is heir, were 
founded on the broadest principles of human nature, 
not on the narrowest criticism of a text. 

But Rome, after these great schisms in the church, 
clings fondly to her ancient order. She looks on 
woman as a snare. Into the crypt of St. Peter (a 
married saint) no female is allowed to enter, except 
on a single day of the year. A lady may not call 
upon the Pope, except in mourning. robes. In the 
Roman mass no music is permitted for the female 
voice. But the Italian church is logical in its practice, 
though it may be wrong in its principle. Where it is 
considered sinful in a priest to marry, how can you 
prevent the female being despised ? 

This question may be put to the American celibate 
schools : to the Tunkers of Ohio, to the Shakers of 
New York. 



378 NEW AMERICA. 

CHAPTER LII. 

THE REVOLT OF WOMAN. 

Elizabeth Denton, founder thoiigli she be of a 
scliool of Female Seers, is not the highest and boldest 
of these feminine reformers. One school of writers, 
a school which is already a church, with its codes and 
canons, its seers and sects, soars high above local 
wranglings, into what is said to be a region of yet 
nobler truths. Eights of Woman ! exclaim the party. 
What is right compared with power ? what is usage 
compared with nature? what is social law compared 
with celestial fact? A woman's right to love, say 
these female reformers, is a detail, her claim to labor, 
a mistake. Neither the first nor the second should 
be urged on the world's attention. One ought to be 
assumed, the other must be dropped. Woman's right 
to love is implied in a yet larger claim, and by the 
new theory of her life her only relation to labor is to 
be exempt from it. 

These reformers make no feint, they hit straight 
out. According to them, only meek and weak re- 
formers would think of prating about equal powers 
and laws. Women, they say, are not the equals of 
man ; they are his superiors. They do not ask from 
him either chivalry or courtesy; they claim the sov- 
ereign rule. In throwing down such a gage, they are 
well aware how much they surprise and ofifend their 
masculine hearers ; but they speak to women, and do 
not expect that men will receive the truth. They 
have a gospel to deliver, a duty to discharge, a war to 
conduct; a social war; no more, no less. Up to this 



THE REVOLT OF WOMAN. 379 

time, they allege that women have been held in bond- 
age ; but their day has come, their chains are falling 
oiF, a deliverer is at hand; a truce, they cry, to com- 
pliments, to hypocrisies, to concessions on all sides ; 
the movement now on foot is a Revolt of Woman 
against Man. 

The first principle of this new party is, that of the 
two sexes Woman is the more perfect being, later in 
growth, finer in structure, grander in form, lighter in 
type. The distinctions between the two are wide and 
deep, one being allied to cherub and seraph, the other 
to stallion and dog. What man is to the gorilla, 
woman is to man. Female superiority is not confined 
to a few degrees of more or less ; it is radical, organic, 
lying in the quality of her brain, in the delicacy of 
her tissues : a superiority of essence, even more than 
of grade. If nature works, as it would seem, through 
an ascending series, woman is the step beyond man 
in Nature's ascent towards the form of angelic life. 
And this is true, not only of human beings, but of all 
beings, from the female moUusk to the New England 
lady. Man is but the paragon of animals, while 
woman, by her gifts of soul, belongs to the celestial 
ranks. He is a lord of the earth, while she is a mes- 
senger from heaven. 

The sexes, too, according to this female creed, differ 
in oflice, as they differ in endowment. Man is here 
to be a tiller of the soil, while his sister, nursed at the 
same breast, is meant for a prophetess and seer. One 
is made coarse and rough, that he may wrestle with 
the outward world ; the other tender and douce, that 
she may commune with the spiritual spheres. Each 
sex, then, has a province of its own, in which the 
whole of its duty lies. Man has to work, woman to 
love. He labors with the flesh, she with the spirit. 



380 N£!W AMERICA. 

A husband is a grower and getter, his wife is a giver 
and spender; not in the way of jest and caprice, but 
by the eternal settlement of law. Man has to toil 
and save, that woman may dispense and enjoy ; the 
higher intelligence turning his material gifts into use 
and beauty : as w^armth draws wine and oil, color and 
perfume, from the watered field. One sex is a culti- 
vator, the other a reconciler. He deals with the 
lower, she with the higher aspects of nature. Man 
conquers the soil. Woman mediates with God. 

The Prophetess of this new church is Eliza Farn- 
ham, of Staten Island ; the temple is unbuilt, but the 
faith and the votaries are said to be found in every 
populous city of the United States. 

Five-and-twenty years have elapsed since the Truth 
of "Woman first flashed upon Eliza ; then a poor girl, 
unmarried, unlettered, untravelled, like most of these 
female seers; having read but little, speaking no 
tongue 'save one; yet keen and shrewd, with thoughts 
in her brain, and words upon her lips. This Truth 
of Woman came upon her in 1842, the year in which 
it is said that Joseph Smith received a command from 
God to restore plurality of wives; came upon her, not 
by induction, but by intuition ; in plainer words, she 
drew her dogma of superiority, as Smith drew his 
dogma of plurality, not from any facts in nature, but 
from the depth and riches of her mind. Like Smith, 
she either kppt the secret to herself, or shared it only 
with her chosen friends. But women, she confesses, 
can teach each other fast, and her ideas were spread 
abroad by an unseen agency. When the Truth came 
upon her, she was yet a virgin ; to prove its power, 
she married, becoming in turn a wife, a mother, a 
widow; making money and losing it; toiling with 
her hands for bread ; burying her children as she had 



THE REVOLT OF WOiMAN. 381 

buried her husband ; wandering from town to town, 
and from State to State; living upon other people's 
bounty; getting past the turn of a woman's life; 
watching the gray hairs start upon her head, the 
crow's feet pucker at her eyes; and then, with the 
evening shadows falling sadly on her life, having felt 
the joys and griefs of womanhood in all its phases, 
she was ready to begin the war, not secretly, and in 
other names, but with her principles avowed and her 
forces in the field. 

The Revolt of Woman opened, as it ought to have 
opened, with an attack on pure Intellect: a faculty 
which the world, in its folly and injustice, puts above 
woman's susceptibilities and inspirations. Reason is 
man's stronghold ; a fortress which he has built for 
himself, and in which he dwells alone. Yes; reason 
is the basis on which he has planted all those canons, 
systems, poetries, sciences, mythologies, which he 
turns with such deadly art against the partner of his 
life. But when Eliza came to look into this pure In- 
tellect, what did she iind ? A high power, a divine 
faculty, a test of nature, an instrument of truth? 
Nothing of the kind. She saw in Intellect nothing 
more than a coarse bungler, dealing with nature in a 
slow, material way, gathering up a few dates and 
facts, tracing out causes and sequents, catching 
through harmonies at law. What was man's gift 
compared against woman's grace ? A process against 
a power. A woman has no need of method. She 
knows the fact when she sees it, feels the truth when 
it is unseen. What man with his logic, observation, 
and procedure, toils up to in a generation, she per- 
ceives at once. To him, intellect is a tiresome and 
uncertain guide ; to her, intuition is a swift, unfailing 
diviner's rod. Has not man, asked Eliza, been using 



382 NEW AMEBIC A. 

his reason for ages past, without having fallen on tho 
central truth of life — the natural sovereignty of the 
female sex ? Reason may have its uses and duties, of 
a humhle kind ; since it may teach a man how to cut 
down trees, how to build boats, how to snare game, 
how to reap corn and sow potatoes, how to fence his 
field and protect his camp ; and for these uses it may 
be kept for a little while; but only in its proper place, 
as the servant of woman's far higher will. 

The reign of Science was announced as over, that 
of Spiritualism as begun. Science is the offspring of 
man. Spiritualism of woman. The first is gross and 
sensual, a thing of the past; the second, pure and 
holy, a thing of the future. Science doubts, Spiritual- 
ism believes ; one is of earth, the other is of heaven. 
Now that the Gospel of Woman is declared, Science 
has ceased to have a leading part in the discovery of 
truth ; the objective world is about to pass into the 
subjective, and the superior sex will read for us, by 
their inner light, the mysteries of heaven and hell. 

Eliza had no special theology to teach. She re- 
jected Peter and Paul, Luther and Cranmer; but she 
had faith in Swedenborg. Peter and Paul had put 
women under men. 

Eliza proudly contended that although her Truth 
of Woman is new and strange, it admits of proof con- 
vincing to the female mind. As to the masculine 
mind, a thing of lower grade, she was not concerned 
about its ways. A Virginian never thought of argu- 
ing with his slave. The Truth, which she had to 
preach, did not require man's sanction to make it 
pass ; and she confined her discourse to the superior 
sex. 

Her evidence in favor of the Truth of Woman lay 
in the following syllogism : — 



THE REVOLT OF WOMAN. 383 

Life is exalted in proportion to its organic and 
functional complexity ; woman's organism is more 
complex, and her totality of functions larger, than 
those of any other being inhabiting our earth ; there- 
fore her position in the scale of life is the most ex- 
alted — the sovereign one. 

That was Eliza's secret. The most complex life is 
the highest; woman's life is the most complex; ergo, 
woman's life is the highest. If the premises are 
sound, the conclusion must be also sound. EUza felt 
so sure of her syllogism, that she rested her case upon 
it. What she claimed for woman is only what Nature 
gives her — the sovereign place. 

It is the same, says Eliza, through all the animal 
grades. The females have more organs than the 
male, and organs are the representatives of power. 
All females have the same organs as males with two 
magnificent sets of structure which males have not; 
structures which concern the nourishing of life. She 
admits that the male is often physically larger than 
the female, so far as size can be measured by bulk of 
body, by length of arm, and by width of chest; but in 
lieu of any argument to be drawn from such a fact in 
favor of the male, it is urged that he is only bigger in 
the grosser parts — in bones and sinews — not in nerves 
and brains. Where the higher functions come into 
play, woman is in advance of man. Her bust has a 
nobler contour, her bosom a liner swell. The upper 
half of her skull is more expansive. All the tissues 
of her body are softer and more delicate. Her voice 
is sweeter, her ear quicker. Her veins are of brighter 
blue, her skin is of purer white, her lips are of deeper 
red. More than all else, as fixing the grade of woman 
above that of man, her brain is of higher quality and 
of quicker growth. 



3g4 ^^W AMERICA. 

On every side, then, says Eliza, the female bears 
away the bell. She is aware that an old saying, 
based on what may be seen in a wood, in a street, in 
a farm-yard, asserts the superior beauty, no less than 
the superior size, of the male animal. But she dis- 
putes the facts. It is true that nearly all male ani- 
mals have a grander figure; that nearly all male birds 
have a brighter plumage than their mates ; that in 
some species the males have special ornaments, such 
as the lion's mane and the peacock's tail ; but these 
appearances, she contends, deceive the eye, while true 
beauty is always to be found in the female form. The 
lioness is nobler than the lion ; the pea-hen statelier 
than the cock. The beauty of your dung-hill rooster 
lies in his feathers and his voice. Pluck him to the 
skin, and you will find that he has neither the soft- 
ness nor the beauty of his female mates. But Eliza 
will not rest her argument for feminine superiority on 
birds ; for her sex in birds is something of a mystery 
to her; and for many reasons (chiefly because girls 
are called nightingales, doves, and wrens) she inclines 
to the belief that the feminine of our higher order 
answers to the masculine in birds. 

All, therefore, that is best and brightest in the two 
beings — outward and inward — beauty to the eye, 
softness to the touch, music to the ear — the heart to 
love, the brain to guide — are developed in the female 
on a richer scale. On his side, man has little to re- 
commend him beyond a brutal strength. In short, 
the picture which Eliza draws of man and woman is 
very much like that of Caliban and Miranda on their 
lonely rock. 

In support of these views of nature, she appeals to 
history, poetry, science, and art ; citing Cornelia and 
the Mother of the Gracchi (whom she describes as 



THE REVOLT OF WOMAN. 385 

two noticeable Roman wives) ; cutting up Shakspeare 
for his low views and slavish pictures of women ; 
pooh-poohing Bacon for his lack of true method and 
insight; braining Michael Angelo for his absence of 
all feminine grace. There is novelty in her appeal, 
and in the illustrations by which she supports it. 
Eliza declares that Cornelia and the Mother of the 
Gracchi were but " average mothers of a later time ;" 
that Shakspeare says nothing of woman that is to her 
credit, or to his own. Portia, it is true, is sensible, 
courageous, brilliant, without vanity; but Eliza knows 
a hundred American women who are better than she. 
Imogen is pure and loving; but the man is to be pitied 
who does not "know a score or two of liner girls." 
Rosalind, Perdita, Ophelia, Beatrice, are fools, if 
pretty ones, in wdiom Eliza can see " little goodness 
save the emptiness of evil." Pious Cordelia, noble 
Isabella, how are ye fallen, stars of the morning ! 
Darwin, too, though he is allowed to be excellent in 
speculation, gets beyond his depth when dealing with 
structure, missing his chance of falling upon the Truth 
of Woman. Strange, she thinks, how so good a natu- 
ralist as Darwin is, should have treated rudimentary 
organs in male animals as remains of lost powers, 
when it is clear to her that they are the germs of new 
powers. But so it is : Darwin considers the rudimen- 
tary mammse as the ruins of old organs, which once 
had uses; in other words, that male functions were at 
some distant period in the past a little nearer to fe- 
male functions than they stand at present. Eliza, on 
the contrary, conceives that these mammse are the 
germs of new organs, growing with the growth of 
time ; in other words, that male functions will, by 
progress and development, come into closer resem- 
blance to female functions. Science is wrong, like 
33 



386 NEW AMEBICA. 

history, and poetry, and art. But what is science? 
Just what man knows: — man, who knows nothing; 
and who is only a grade higher in the scale of being 
than a chimpanzee ! A true science would show you 
that woman, as a being with no waste' organs, no 
rudimentary powers, stands at the head of all created 
things. 

Milton's Eve — though fairest, wisQst, best — is not 
high enough in the scale for Eliza. Eve is not made 
first of the twain in Paradise ; first, as she ought to be, 
in virtue of her keener insight, her braver spirit, her 
larger longings. Nay, the Female Seer grows hot 
against the Bible for its hard and cruel way of dealing 
with that story of the Fall ; urging that the Scriptures 
tell the tale as a man was sure to conceive it, to his 
own advantage, and to woman's loss. She writes it 
out afresh, and puts the thing in another light. 

In this new version of the Fall, Eve is not weak, 
but strong. She finds Adam in bonds, and she sets 
him free. He is bound by a bad law to live in a state 
of darkness and bondage, a mere animal life, without 
knowing good from evil. She breaks his fetters, and 
shows him the way to heaven. The consequences of 
her act are noble ; and through her courage Man did 
not fall, but rise. She did "a great service to human- 
ity,'' when she plucked the forbidden fruit. 

In the details of the Fall, Eliza finds much comfort, 
when she can read them by her own inward light. 
Wisdom (in the form of a Serpent) addressed the 
woman, not the man, who would have cared little for 
the tree of knowledge. The temptation offered to her 
was spiritu il. She took the forbidden fruit, in the 
hope of becoming wiser and diviner than she had been. 
Man followed her. Yes : the ascendancy of woman 
began in Paradise ! 



!:||, a!i;i;Lii!iiif,!ii 



:il; 




< < 



Wis! 




ONEIDA CREEK. 387 

CHAPTER LIII. 

ONEIDA CREEK. 

On the opposite verge of thought to the systems of 
Mother Ann, of Elizabeth Denton, of Eliza Farnham, 
stands a body of reformers who call themselves, in 
their dogmatic aspect, Perfectionists, in their social 
aspect, Bible Communists. These people aver that 
they have discovered the only way ; and have reduced 
to practice what their rivals in reform have only re- 
duced into talk. They profess to base their theory of 
family life on the New Testament, most of all on the 
teachings of St. Paul. 

What these Bible People (as they call themselves) 
have done in the sphere of life and thought has cer- 
tainly been attempted in no faltering spirit. They 
have restored, as they say, the Divine government of 
the world ; they have put the two sexes on an equal 
footing; they have declared marriage a fraud and prop- 
erty a theft ; they have abolished for themselves all 
human laws ; they have formally renounced their alle- 
giance to the United States. 

The founder of this school of reform — a school 
which boasts already of having its prophets, semina- 
ries, periodicals, and communities — its schism, its 
revivals, its persecutions, its male and female martyrs, 
— is John Humphrey Noyes : a tall, pale man, with 
sandy hair and beard, gray, dreamy eyes, good mouth, 
white temples, and a noble forehead. He is a little like 
Carlyle ; and it is the fashion among his people to say 
that he closely resembles our Chelsea sage; a fiction 
which is evidently a pleasant delusion to the Saint 



388 NEW AMERICA. 

himself. He has been in turn a graduate of Dartmouth 
College in Connecticut, a law clerk at Putney in Ver- 
mont, a theological student in Andover, Massacliusetts, 
a preacher at Yale College, New Haven, a seceder 
from the Congregational Church, an outcast, a heretic, 
an agitator, a dreamer, an experimentalizer; finally, he 
is now acknowledged by many people as a sect- founder, 
a revelator, a prophet, enjoying light from heaven and 
personal intimacies with God. 

I have been spending a few days at Oneida Creek, 
the chief seat of the three societies founded by ISToyes, 
— Oneida, Wallingford, and Brooklyn, — as the guest 
of Brother Noyes, I have lived in his family ; had a 
good deal of talk with him ; had access to his books 
and papers, even those of a private nature ; had many 
conversations with the brothers and sisters whom he 
has gathered into order, both in his presence and apart 
from him ; had leave from him to copy such of the 
Family papers as I pleased. The account which fol- 
lows of this extraordinary body of men has been writ- 
ten fresh from their own mouths, and from my own 
observation, on the spot which it describes, 

"You will find," said Horace Greeley, as we parted 
in New York, "that Oneida Communism is a trade 
success; the rest you will see and judge for yourself." 

From Oneida, a young and busy town on the New 
York Central Railway, a wide and dusty road, on 
either side of which, behind a line of frame-houses 
and their little gardens, the forest is still green and 
fresh, leads you to Oneida Creek ; a part of that Indian 
reservation which was left by a compassionate legisla- 
ture to the Oneidas, one of the Six Nations famous in 
the early history of New York for their honesty, their 
good faith, and their constant friendship for the whites. 
Twenty years ago the Creek ran through a virgin soil. 



ONEIDA GREEK. 389 

Here and there a log house peeped from beneath the 
trees, in which some remnants of a great and unhappy 
tribe of hunters stood, as it were, at bay. The water 
yielded fish, the forest game. The only clearings had 
been made by fire ; woods either burnt by chance or 
felled for winter fuel. A patch of maize might be 
seen on some sunny slope ; but the Oneida Indian is 
a very poor farmer at his best; and the district in 
which he dwelt with his squaw and his papoose, a 
tangle of brier and swamp and stones, was unbroken 
to the use of man. He sold his land to a pale-face, 
richer than himself, for a sum of money not equal in 
value to the maple and hickory woods upon it. From 
this second owner the Perfectionists bought the Creek, 
with its surrounding woods and open ; and in twenty 
years the surface has been wholly changed. Roads 
have been cut through the forest ; bridges have been 
built; the Creek has been trained and dammed; mills 
for slitting planks and for driving wheels have been 
erected ; the bush has been cleared away ; a great 
hall, ofl&ces and workshops have been raised; lawns 
have been laid out, shrubberies planted, and footways 
gravelled ; orchards and vineyards have been reared 
and fenced ; manufactures have been set going — iron- 
work, satchel-making, fruit-preserving, silk-spinning; 
and the whole aspect of this wild forest land has been 
beautified into the likeness of a rich domain in Kent. 
Few corners in America can compete in loveliness with 
the swards and gardens lying about the home of the 
Oneida family, as these things arrest the eyes of a 
stranger coming upon them from the rough fields 
even of the settled region of New York. 

The home, which stands on a rising knoll command- 
ing some pretty views, is remarkable without and 
within ; for among the laws which the Bil)le Com- 
88 * 



390 NSW AMEBIC A. 

munists have put bebincl them are the seven orders of 
architecture. The bulkier of this pile is James 
Plamilton, once a New England farmer, carpenter, 
what not, as a 'New Englander is apt to be ; a man of 
sense and tact, not much of a scholar, not at all an 
orator, but a person of some natural gifts, which fit 
him to be a ruler and contriver in the midst of inferior 
men. He is the head of this Oneida family, just as 
Noyes is the head of all the Perfectionist families ; and 
being master of the house, so to speak, he is also 
builder of the house ; though he claims that everything 
in it, from the position of a fireplace to the furnishing 
of a library, is the result of a special sign from heaven. 
I ma}' add, without ofl'ence, that Brother Hamilton 
was open to new lights, even when they flashed from 
a Gentile brain ; most of all to those of my fellow- 
traveller, William Haywood, architect and engineer. 

In the centre of the pile, approached by a wide 
passage and a flight of stairs, is the great hall ; a chapel, 
a theatre, a concert room, a casino, a working-place, 
all in one ; being supplied with benches, lounging- 
chairs, work-tables, a reading-desk, a stage, a gallery, 
a pianoforte. In this hall the sisters play and sew, the 
elders preach, the librarian (Brother Pitt) reads the 
news, the young men and maidens make love — sc 
far as such a Gentile art is allowed to live in this 
curious place. ISTear the great hall is the drawing- 
room, properly the ladies' room ; and around this 
chamber stand the sleeping-apartments of the family 
and its guests. Beneath this floor, on either side of 
the wide passage, are the offices, together with a re- 
ception room, a library, a place of business. Kitchen, 
refectory, fruit-cellar, laundry, are in separate buildings. 
The store is in front of the home, divided from it by 
a lawn; and farther away, peeping prettih' through 



ONEIDA a REEK. 391 

the green trees, stand the mills, farms, stables, cow- 
sheds, presses, and general workshops. The estate is 
abont six hundred acres in extent; the Family gathered 
under one roof number about three hundred. Every- 
thing at Oneida Creek suggests taste, repose, and 
wealth ; and the account-books prove that during the 
past seven or eight years the Family have been making 
a good deal of money, which they have usefully laid 
out, either in the erection of new mills, or in draining 
and enriching the soil. 

The men affect no particular garb ; though the loose 
coat, the wide-awake, and peg-top breeches, common 
in every part of rural America, make up their ordinary 
wear. They have no dress for Sundays and holidays ; 
having abolished Sundays and holidays along with 
every other human institution. But they are open to 
new lights on dress, saying that the last thing has not' 
yet been done in the way of hats and boots. At one 
of their evening meetings, I heard Brother Pitt, a 
well-read man, deliver his testimony in favor of peg- 
tops. The ladies wear a dress which is peculiar, and 
to my eyes becoming. It may be made of any mate- 
rial and of any color ; though brown and blue for out- 
door wear, white for evening in the meeting-room, are 
the prevailing tints. Muslin, cotton, and a coarse silk, 
supply the materials. The hair is cut short, and parted 
down the centre. No stays, no crinolines, are worn. 
A tunic falling to the knee, loose trousers of the same 
material, a vest buttoning high towards the throat, 
short hanging sleeves, and a straw hat ; these simple 
articles make up a dress in which a plain woman 
escapes much notice, and a prett}^ girl looks bewitch- 
ing. I am told that it is no part of IsToyes' design that 
the young ladies of his family should look bewitching; 
for such is not his theory of a modest and moral 



392 N^W A3IERICA. 

woman's life ; but for my own poor self, being only a 
Gentile and a sinner, I could not help seeing that many 
of his young disciples have been gifted with rare 
beauty, and that two of the singing-girls, Alice Ack- 
ley and Harriet Worden, have a grace and suppleness 
of form, as well as loveliness of face and hand, to warm 
a painter's heart. 

So much of the Oneida Community you may see in 
a few hours, if you simply wander about the place, 
with Brother Bolls, a gentleman who for twenty-five 
years has been a Baptist preacher in Massachusetts, 
and who is now a Perfectionist brother in Oneida, with 
this special duty of receiving ordinary strangers. You 
see a fine house, a noble lawn, a green shrubbery, or- 
chards shining with apple-trees, pear-trees, plum-trees, 
cherry-trees, prolific vineyards, excellent farms, busy 
workshops, grazing cattle, whizzing mills, and grind- 
ing saws, — peace, order, beauty, and material wealth; 
and these are what the picnic visitors, who come in 
thousands to stare in wonder, to hear good music, to 
eat squash and pastry, always see. They are some- 
thing ; signs of life, but not the life itself. The secrets 
of this strange success, the foundations on which this 
community rests, the social features which sustain it, 
are of deeper interest than the fact itself; and these 
mysteries of the Society are not explained to picnic 
parties by Brother Bolls. 

It is well known that all the Communistic trials 
which have been made in England, Germany, and 
America, from Rapp's Harmony, and Owen's New 
Harmony, down to Cabet's Icaria, have been failures. 
Men with brains, women with hearts, have often turned 
from what they deem the evils of competition to what 
they hope may prove the saving principles of associa- 
tion; but no body of such reformers, with the sole 



ONEIDA CREEK. 393 

exception of jour wifeless followers of Ann Lee, have 
ever yet been able to work an association in which 
they held a community of goods. Each failure may 
have had its own history, its own explanation, showing 
how near it came to success; but the fact of failure 
cannot be denied. The Socialists had to quit New 
Lanark ; the Rappists liad to sell Harmony ; the Ica- 
rians have been swept from Nauvoo. Liberty, equality, 
fraternity, have not hitherto paid their weekly bills ; 
and a society that does not pay its expenses, must, in 
the long run, go to the wall, even though it should, in 
other respects, reproduce the image of paradise on the 
earth. Man may not sit all day under a palm -tree, 
munching his creel of dates, and feeling at peace with 
heaven and earth. Want prods him forward ; and he 
has no choice but one of the two evils — either to work 
or die. Each trial and failure of association puts the 
principle into peril. .See what you come to, laughs 
the Sadducee, happy in his broad lands, his mansions, 
gardens, vinej^ards, when you disturb the order of 
time, of nature, and of Providence! You come to 
waste, to beggary, and death. Competition, which is 
the soul of trade, for ever! and blessed be heaven, 
which fights on the side of the great capitalists! 

If the theory of mutual help, as against that of 
self-help, be the true principle of social life, as so 
many men say, so many women feel, why have nearly 
all the attempts to live by it, and under it, ended in 
disaster ? 

"I tell you," said Brother Noyes to me this morn- 
ing, "they have all failed because they were not 
founded on Bible truth. Religion is at the root of 
life ; and a safe social theory must always express a 
religious truth. Now there are four stages in the true 
organization of a family: (1) Reconciliation with 



394 NEW AMERICA. 

God ; (2) Salvation from sin ; (3) Brotherhood of man 
and woman ; (4) Community of labor and of its 
fruits. Owen, Ripley, Fourier, Cabet, began at the 
third and fourth stages ; they left God out of their 
tale, and they came to nothing." 

Noyes makes no secret of his opinion that he has 
contrived, by the Divine favor, a new and perfect 
system of society; that he has already established, by 
trial, the chief principles of the new domestic order; 
and that it only remains for the communities of Oneida, 
"Wallingford, and Brooklyn, to work out a few details, 
in order to its universal adoption in the United States. 
If the reader cares to hear how this man — who has 
done so much in America, and of whom so little is 
known in England — came to think as he does on the 
religious aspects and bearings of domestic life — I will 
put before him, as openly as a layman dare, the results 
of my inquiries at Oneida Creek. 



CHAPTER LIY. 

HOLINESS. 

" While he was yet living at Putney, in Vermont, 
as a lawyer's clerk, l^oyes was struck by that fierce 
revival of '31, which wrecked so many New England 
barks. Noyes is said to have suddenly grown grave 
and moody ; all his lights appear to have gone out, 
leaving him in the dark night, amidst howling storms, 
against which his puny strength of intellect could 
make no head. Turning his gaze inwards, he became, 



HOLINESS. 395 

as he told me, conscious of sin and death. How could 
he free liimself from these evils ? Feeling the world 
and the devil strong within him, he abandoned law, 
taking up with the older science of theology. While 
studying in his new course at Andover, he fell into 
many temptations, ate and drank freely, and gave way 
to many other seductions of the flesh. The young 
divines, his fellow-students in the college, were a bad 
set, who laughed at revival energies, and sneered at 
the religious world. Noyes thought he would go away 
from Andover; seeking the Lord elsewhere, and on 
opening the Bible, his eye fell upon the conclusive 
text, "He is not here!" With this warning from 
Heaven before his eyes, he went away from Andover 
to Yale College, at Newhaven, where he became a 
great seeker after truth — not of the truth as it stands 
between God and man only, but of the truth as 
between man and man. In the midst of dreams as 
wild (I infer) as ever visited the brain of an Arab, 
there was always about IS'oyes a practical American view 
of things. He felt that the Divine plan must be perfect ; 
that if he could read that plan, he would find in it an 
Order of the Earth, no less than an Order of Heaven. 
What is that Order of. the Earth ? Not the Pagan law 
under which we live. He turned for light to the 
written word. In the Bible, he says, he sought for 
that rule of life which the schools could not teach 
him. Pondering the words of the gospel, and conning 
by himself the writings of Paul, he found in these 
original documents of the Church a comfort which the 
preachers of Newhaven had not proved to his soul 
that they held in gift. Paul spoke to his heart ; but 
in a sense, as he asserts, quite foreign to that in which 
the apostle had been understood at Antioch and 
Rome. 



396 NEW AMERICA. 

Much reading of Paul's epistles led him to believe 
that the Christian faith, as it appears in the Churches 
of Europe and America, even in those which style 
themselves Reformed, is a huge historical mistake. 
There is no visible Church of Christ on earth. The 
Church of Paul and Peter was the true one ; a com- 
munity of brothers, of equals, of saints ; but it passed 
away at an early date, our Lord having returned in 
the Spirit, as He had promised, to dwell among His 
people evermore. On this second advent, Noyes says 
that our Lord abolished the old law; closing the 
empire of Adam, cleansing His children from their 
sin, and setting up His kingdom in the hearts of all 
who would accept His reign. Noyes fixes this spiritual 
advent in the year 70, immediately after the fall of 
Jerusalem ; since which date, he says, there have been 
one true Church, and many false churches, having 
His name; — a Church of His saints, men sinless in 
body and in soul ; confessing Him as their prince ; 
taking upon them a charge of holiness ; rejecting law 
and usage, and submitting their passions to His will ; 
and, churches of the world, built up in man's art and 
pride, with thrones and societies, prelates and cardi- 
nals, and popes; churches of the screw, the fagot, 
and the rack, having their forms and oaths, their 
hatreds and divisions, their anathemas, celibacies and 
excommunications. The devil, says Noyes, began his 
reign on the very same day with Christ, and the 
official churches of Greece and Rome, together with 
their half-reformed brethren in England and America, 
are the capital provinces of the devil's empire. The 
kingdoms of the earth are Satan's: yet the Perfect 
Society, founded by Paul, into which Christ descended 
as a living spirit, never quite perished from out of 
men's hearts, but, by the grace of God, kept an 



HOLINESS. 397 

abiding witness for itself, until the time should come 
for reviving the apostolic fiiith and practice, not in a 
corrupted Europe, a worn-out Asia, but in the fresh 
and green communities of the United States. Some 
high and vestal natures kept the flame alive. The 
day for this true Church came. Faith, banished from 
the busy crowd, returned to the young seekers after 
truth at Yale ; and the family of Christ, after being 
corrupted in Antioch, persecuted in Rome, and cari- 
catured in London, is now re-funded at Wallingford, 
Brooklyn, and Oneida Creek ! 

In this new American sect, — a church as well as a 
school, — the rule of faith and the rule of life are 
equally plain. The Perfectionist has a right to do 
what he likes. Of course he will tell you (as my host 
at Oneida tells me) that from the nature of the case 
he can do nothing but what is good. The Holy 
Spirit sustains and guards him. Some may go M^'ong 
through the old Adam being fierce within them ; but a 
few exceptions do not kill an eternal truth. We hold 
that a king can do no wrong, though a good deal of 
scandal, tempered by daggers and actresses, may af- 
flict our royal and imperial courts. A Perfectionist 
knows no law; neither that pronounced from Sinai, 
and repeated from Gerizim, nor that which is admin- 
istered in Washington and New York. He does not 
live under law, but under God: that is to saj^, under 
what his ow^ mind prompts him to do, as being right. 
The Lord has made him free. To him, the word is 
nothing: its force having been wholly spent for him 
at the Second Coming. No commandment in the 
Ten, no statute on the rolls, is binding upon him, — a 
child of grace, delivered from the power of the law, 
and from the stain of sin. Laws are for sinners — he 
34 



398 ^^W AMERICA. 

is a saint; other men fall into temptation — he is 
sealed and reclaimed by the Holy Ghost. 

This frame of mind, which is not unlikely to look 
like rebellion in the eyes of a Gentile, is called by the 
Bible Communists, a state of submission. In this 
world you can only choose whom you will serve. 
You cannot have two masters, — God and Mammon. 
Earth is not perfect ; Christ is Perfect. In confessing 
Christ, you give up the world, yielding it bodily, thor- 
oughly, and forever. ]S'o half measure will suffice to 
save you ; and the whole tendency of American 
thought (before the War) being in favor of individ- 
uals as against institutions, no one felt much surprised 
on hearing that Noyes and his adherents had made a 
formal renunciation of their duty to the United States. 
Others had done the same thing before him; Shakers, 
Tunkers, Mormons, Socialists, Icarians, and many 
more. In fact, not a few Americans of the higher 
class had come to regard the State as a kind of politi- 
cal club, from which they might withdraw at pleasure; 
but the Perfectionist went far beyond the Socialist, 
the Shaker, and the Mormon, in his renunciation, for 
he rejected the law of God as well as the laws of men; 
the civil code, the statutes at large, the canons and de- 
grees, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the 
Sermon on the Mount ; all his old voluntary and in- 
voluntary rules, from his temperance pledge to his 
marriage vows. Nothing of the old man, the old cit- 
izen, was left to him. He denied the churches, he 
renounced his obligations, he defied the magistrates 
and the police. In his obedience to God, he cast away 
all the safeguards invented by man. Noyes had been 
a teetotaller; on assuming holiness, he began to drink 
ardent spirits. He had been temperate as a Brah- 
man ; he now indulged his palate with highly-spiced 



HOLINESS. 399 

meats. He had been chaste in his habits, regular in 
his hours of sleep ; he now began to stay out all 
night, to wander about the quays, to lie in doorways, 
to visit infamous houses, to consort with courtesans 
and thieves. In defending himself against men who 
cannot reconcile such a mode of living with the pro- 
fession of holiness, Noyes asserts that he had given 
himself up to temptation, but the power in which he 
trusted for protection had been strong enough to save 
him. He had drunk, and gorged, and wantoned with 
the flesh, in order to escape from the bonds of sys- 
tem. As he puts the matter to himself, he said, 
" Can I trust God for morality ? Can I trust my 
passions, desires, propensities, everything within me 
which has hitherto been governed by worldly rules 
and my own volition, to the paramount mercy of 
God's Spirit?" He answered to himself that he 
could and would put his faith, his conduct, his sal- 
vation, in the keeping of the Holy Ghost; and in 
this confidence, he says, he walked through the house 
of sin untouched, as the Hebrew children stood un- 
scathed in the midst of fire. 

But how, it may be asked, does a man arrive at this 
stage of grace ? Nothing (if I understand it) is more 
easy. You have only to wish it, and the thing is 
done. Good works are not necessary, prayers are not 
desirable ; nothing serves a man but faith. You stand 
up in public, by the side of some brother in the Lord, 
and take upon yourself a profession of Christ. You 
say, you are freed from the power of sin, and the stain 
is suddenly washed from your soul. In this American 
creed, facts would appear to lie in wait for words, and 
all that is said is apparently also done. " He stood 
up and confessed Holiness," — such is the form of an- 
nouncing that a lamb has been brought into the fold 
of ^oyes. 



400 NEW AMERICA. 

"When ]!Toyes began to preach his doctrine, some 
years ago, the spirit of separation was alive and active 
in every part of New England; for many persons 
thought that the only hope of staying this impetus of 
the American mind towards social chaos lay in the 
principles of association then being tested in such 
experiments as Mount Lebanon, New Harmony, and 
Brook Farm. In such a state of confusion, it is no 
marvel that Noyes should have failed to see that his 
theory of Individual Action, as he first conceived it, 
could not work. A man may be a law to himself; 
but how can he be a law to another man, who is also 
bound to be- a law to himself? Noyes ma}^ receive 
from his own conscience a guiding light; and Hamilton 
may receive from his own conscience a guiding light: 
each may be sufficient for its purpose ; but how can 
Noyes' light become a rule for Hamilton, Hamilton^ 
for Noyes', unless by a bargain between the two ? If 
they could not make such a bargain, they must dwell 
apart; if they could compromise the affair as to these 
two lights, they came under law. From this alterna- 
tive they have no escape : on one side chaos, on the 
other law. 

Noyes found himself in trouble the day he began 
to live with his male and female disciples according 
to their notions of celestial order — not under law, 
but under grace ; and before the community could 
exist as a fact, a second principle had to be intro- 
duced. 

This second principle is called Sympath}^; and the 
office which it holds in the Family is very much like 
that which the world assigns to Public Opinion. Sym- 
pathy corrects the individual will, and reconciles nature 
with obedience, liberty with light. 

Thus a brother may do anything he likes : but he is 



HOLINESS. 401 

trained to do everything in sympathy with the general 
wish. If the puhlic judgment is against him, he is 
wrong — that is to say, he is going away from the 
path of grace ; and his only chance of happiness lies 
in going back to what is most agreeable to the common 
mind. The Family is supposed to be always wiser 
than the nnit. 

A man who wants anything for himself — say, a new 
hat, a holiday, a young damsel's smiles — must consult 
with one of the Elders and see how the brotherhood 
feels on the subject of his wish. If their sympathy is 
not with him, he retires from his suit. When the 
matter is of moment, he seeks the advice of a com- 
mittee of Elders, who may choose to refer it to the 
Family in their evening sittings. 

It was long before this second great principle was 
introduced as a ruling power, and until it was intro- 
duced, the community of Perfect Saints had little of 
what the world would call success. 
34* 



402 N^W AMERICA. 

CHAPTER LY. 

A BIBLE FAMILY. 

While Noyes was still a preacher of Holiness, going 
about among the churches, he made converts of 
Abigail Merviu (a woman was necessary to him, and 
Abigail was a female disciple of whom he might feel 
proud) and James Boyle ; and these two early follow- 
ers were the iirst apostates from his creed, Abigail 
seems to have expected an offer of marriage ; Boyle 
had hopes of being elected pope ; but neither of these 
pretensions suited l^oyes, who felt averse to wedlock, 
and meant to be pope himself. They were only the 
first seceders ; for as time wore on, and the true prin- 
ciple of Holiness was understood among his people^ 
the units fell away from the mass. Each man was a 
law to himself; the spirit operated in single minds; 
and out of many independent members it was impos- 
sible to found a church. 'No one would concede, no 
one o-bey, no one unite. At the end of four years' 
labor, Noyes stood alone; all his beloved disciples 
having gone their way ; some into the world, others 
into heresies, many into older sects, from which they 
had been drawn by him. The press had opened fire 
upon them. JS'oyes had been denounced as crazy ; a 
charge to which his conduct and preaching oftentimes 
exposed him. There were still Perfectionists, but 
Noyes was not their pope. 

Taught by painful trials that ropes cannot be spun 
out of sand, he turned, as so many others were at that 
time turning, to the principle of association — with 
him it must be Bible Association — for a future. Cast 



A BIBLE FAMILY. 403 

adrift from his old friends of New Haven, he went 
back to his father's house at Putney, in Vermont, 
where he had been first awakened into spiritual life, 
and there he began his work of converting the world 
afresh, by founding a Bible class, and teaching a few 
simple and rustic persons the way of grace. Some 
listened to his Avords ; for never, perhaps, since the 
da^'s of Herod the Great, certainly not since the years 
preceding the English Civil War, had any people ever 
found itself in a moral chaos so strange as that which 
prevailed in the United States. Abigail Mervin had 
declared, on quitting the sect, that their gospel freedom 
ran into indecency. The same thing had been said 
in the streets of Jerusalem and in the streets of 
London ; but while the Gentiles of New York laughed 
at these stories, the believers waxed in zeal. What 
were the world and its ways to them ? The Putney 
class grew strong in purpose, if not in numbers ; for 
Noyes having come to see that quality of converts, 
rather than quantity, was of moment to him, now 
bent the force of his genius, which was great and ori- 
ginal, upon the dozen hearers whom his voice had 
called together in his native town ; until he could 
transform the Bible class into a Bible Family ; in 
other words, until he had made them ready in soul 
and body for the great experiments of dwelling in one 
house, free from the trammels, everywhere else en- 
dured, of living under law. 

To lodge a family of converts under one roof, the 
teacher required a large house. A large house, even 
in Vermont, where the dwellings are built of wood, 
costs money, and Noyes was poor. His life had been 
that of a wanderer to and fro ; resting-place he had 
none ; and the shepherd, like his sheep, was without 
shelter from the storm. Among his disciples in Ver- 



404 NEW AMEBIC A. 

mont there was one young lady of good family, with 
present means and some expectations ; such a young 
lady would be a blessing to him in every way, if he 
could only obtain her as a wife ; but then his principles 
stood in the way. Marriage befng utterly against his 
doctrine of the true gospel life, how was he to get her 
person and her money into his power ? Of course, he 
could not offer his hand and his heart in the usual 
way, since she had heard him declaim against wedlock 
as the sign of a degenerate state. In fact, if he pro- 
posed to her at all, — and his need for" her dollars was 
very sore, — he would be compelled to say that he 
should not expect her to be true to him only, and 
that he would certainly not engage to be true to her. 
But Harriet's position was out of the common way. 
She had no father, no mother, no brother, no sister. Her 
onlj^ kinsman was an aged and foolish grandfather. 
She had been in love with a young man who wished to 
marry her, but the old man had interfered to prevent 
him ; on which the girl had fallen sick, and in a fit of 
remorse her grandfather had sworn an oath that in 
future she should do as she pleased, and he would 
willingly abide her wishes. Thus, a way had been 
opened, as it were, for Noyes to come -in. with his 
proposal, which conveyed to her an offer of his hand 
in the following words (a copy of which has been 
given to me by himself) : — 

From J. H. Noyes, to Miss H. A. Holton. 

Putney, June 11, 1838. 
Beloved Sister, — After a deliberation of more 
than a year, in patient waiting, and watching for indi- 
cations of the Lord's will, I am now permitted — and 
indeed happily constrained — by a combination of 



A BIBLE FAMILY. 405 

favorable circumstances to propose to you a partnership 
which I will not call marriage till I have defined it. 

As believers, we are already one with each other, 
and with all saints. This primary and universal union 
is more radical, and of course more important, than 
any partial and external partnership ; and, with refer- 
ence to this, it is said, "there is neither male or 
female," neither marrying nor giving in marriage, in 
heaven. With this in view, we can enter into no 
engagements with each other, which shall limit the 
range of our affections, as they are limited in matri- 
monial engagements, by the fashion of this world. I 
desire and expect my yoke-fellow will love all who 
love God, whether they be male or female, with a 
warmth and strength of affection unknown to earthly 
lovers, and as freely as if she stood in no particular 
connection with me. In fact, the object of my con- 
nection with her will be, not to monopolize and en- 
slave her heart or my own, but to enlarge and establish 
both in the free fellowship of God's universal family. 
If the external union and companionship of a man and 
woman in accordance with these principles is properly 
called marriage, I know that marriage exists in heaven, 
and I have no scruple in offering you my heart and 
hand, with an engagement to be married in due form, 
as soon as God shall permit. 

At first I designed to set before you many weighty 
reasons for this proposal ; but, upon second thought, 
I prefer the attitude of a witness to that of an advo- 
cate, and shall therefore only suggest, briefly, a few 
matter-of-fact considerations, leaving the advocacy 
of the case to God — the customary persuasions and 
romance to your own imagination — and more par- 
ticular explanations to a personal interview. 

1. In the plain speech of a witness, not of a flatterer, 



406 NEW AMERICA. 

I respect and love you for many desirable qualities, 
spiritual, intellectual, moral, and personal ; and espe- 
cially for your faith, kindness, simplicity, and modesty. 

2. I am confident that the partnership I propose 
will greatly promote our mutual happiness and im- 
provement. 

3. It will also set us free, at least myself, from much 
reproach, and many evil surmisings, which are occa- 
sioned by celibacy in present circumstances. 

4. It will enlarge our sphere and increase our means 
of usefulness to the people of God. 

5. I am willing, at this parti<}ular time, to testify by 
example that I am a follower of Paul, in holding that 
"marriage is honorable in all." 

6. I am also willing to testify practically against 
that "bondage of liberty" which utterly sets at naught 
the ordinances of men, and refuses to submit to them 
even for the Lord's sake. I know that the immortal 
union of hearts — everlasting honey-moon, which alone 
is worthy to be called marriage, can never be made by 
a ceremony, and I know equally well that such a mar- 
riage can never be marred by a ceremony. You are 
aware that I have no profession save that of a servant 
of God — a profession which has thus far subjected me 
to many vicissitudes, and has given me but little of 
this world's prosperity. If you judge me by the out- 
ward appearance, or the future by the past, you will 
naturally find, in the irregularity and seeming insta- 
bility of my character and fortune, many objections to 
a partnership. Of this I will only say, that I am con- 
scious of possessing, by the grace of God, a spirit of 
firmness, perseverance, and faithfulness in every good 
work, which has made the vagabond, incoherent ser- 
vice to which I have thus far been called, almost 
intolerable to me; and I shall welcome heaven's order 



A BIBLE FAMILY. 407 

for my release from it as an exile after seven years' 
pilgrimage would welcome the sight of his home. I 
see now no reason why I should not have a "certain 
dwelling-place," and enter upon a course which is 
consistent with the duties of domestic life. Perhaps 
your reply to this will he the voice saying to me, — 

" Watchman, let thy wanderings cease ; 
Hie thee to thy quiet home." 

Yours in the Lord, 

J. H. NOYES. 

Harriet, left to herself, answered as the preacher 
wished. In a few days they were united ; and ISToyes 
expended her seven thousand dollars in building a 
house and a printing-office, in buying presses and types, 
and in starting a newspaper. So long as the old man 
lived, he supplied them with money to live on ; when 
he died, Brother Noyes came in for nine thousand 
dollars in one lump. He makes no secret of the fact 
that he married Harriet for her money ; to use his own 
words, she was given to him as his reward for preach- 
ing the Truth. 

The first family gathered into celestial order at Put- 
ney included the Prophet's wife, his mother, his sister, 
and his brother ; all of whom have remained true to 
his theory of domestic life. His mother died only a 
few days before my arrival at Oneida Creek; an aged 
lady, who Avent to her rest (I am told) confident that 
the system introduced by her son is the only true and 
perfect society of Christian men and women on the 
earth. 

These persons, with a few preachers, farmers, doc- 
tors, and their wives and daughters, all men of means, 
character, and position, went to live in the same house : 



408 ^^W AMERICA. 

setting up, as they oddly phrased it, a branch of the 
heavenly business in Putney, after a formal renuncia- 
tion of the Republican Government, and an everlast- 
ing secession from the United States. 

And now began for them a new life, more daring, 
more original than that which Eipley, Dana, and Haw- 
thorn tried to follow at Brook Farm. They stopped 
all prayer and religious service, they put down Sun- 
day, they broke up family ties, and, without separating 
anybody, put an end to the selfish relations of husband 
and wife. All property was thrown into a common 
stock; all debts, all duties, fell upon the Society, 
which ate in one room, slept under one roof, and lived 
upon one store. At first they were strict and stern 
with each other ; for written codes being all set aside, 
as things of the old world, they had no means of guid- 
ing weak, of controlling wicked brethren, save that of 
free criticism on their conduct ; a system of govern- 
ment which had yet to become a saving power. The 
life was somewhat hard. Three hours were spent 
each morning in the hall ; one hour in reading such 
book of history as might help them to understand the 
Bible better; one hour in silence, or in reading the 
Scriptures ; a third hour in discussing the things they 
had read and thought. Mid-day was given to labor 
on the farm ; evening to study, reading, music, and 
society. One person gave lessons to the rest in either 
Greek or Hebrew ; a second read aloud some English 
or German writer on hermeneutics ; and a third stood 
up and criticised his brother saint. In the midst of 
these incessant labors, the old Adam appeared amongst 
them, and slew their peace. One man ate too much, 
a second drank too much, a third ran wild in love. 
Strife arose among the brethren, leading in turn to 
gossip among their neighbors, to queries about them 



A BIBLE FAMILY. 409 

in the local press, to attacks in the surrounding grog- 
shops, and at length into suits in the Gentile courts. 
What they had most to fear in their little Eden was 
gospel freedom in the matter of goods and wives. 

Noyes admits that the Devil found a way into the 
second Eden as into the first ; and that in Putney as 
in Paradise, the Evil One worked his evil will through 
woman. When the moral disorder in his little para- 
dise could be no longer hidden, be became very angry 
and very sad. How was he to bear this cross ? A sud- 
den change from legal restraints to gospel liberties, 
must needs be a trial to the lusts of man. But how 
could he make distinctions in the work of God ? God 
had given to man his passions, appetites aud powers. 
These powers and appetites are free. Desire has its 
use and faculty in the heavenly system ; and when the 
soul is free, all use implies the peril of abuse. Must, 
then, the Saints come under bonds ? He could not see 
it. Aware that many of his people had disgraced the 
profession of Holiness, he still said to himself, in the 
words of St. Paul, "Must I go back because offences 
come ?" To go back was for him to tear up his Bible 
and lay down his work. Such a return was beyond his 
desire, and beyond his power : so he labored on with 
his people, curbing the unruly, guiding the careless, 
and expelling the impenitent. As he put the case to 
himself: — If a man were moving from one town to 
another, he could not hope to do it without moil or 
dirt, how then could he expect to change his place of 
toil from earth to heaven without suffering damage by 
the way ? Waste is incident to change. His people 
were unprepared for so sharp a trial ; and the quarrels 
which had come upon them, scandalizing Windham 
County, and scattering many of the Saints, were laid 
35' 



410 NEW AMERICA. 

by him to the account of those as yet unused to the 
art of living under grace. 

Some rays of comfort fell upon Noyes in this hour 
of his failure and distress. A rival body of Perfec- 
tionists, of which Mahan was pope, and Taylor prime- 
minister, had set up an Eden of their own at Oberlin, 
in Lovain Count}^, Ohio. Mahan pretented to see 
visions, to converse with angels, and to receive com- 
munications direct from God. Taylor, an able editor 
and eloquent preacher, made also some pretensions to 
celestial gifts. Now, between ISToyes and Mahan, Put- 
ney and Oberlin, there had reigned a fraternal feud, 
like that which disgraced the two sons of Eve. Ac- 
cording to all the Perfectionist prophets. Holiness and 
Liberty are the two primary elements in the atmo- 
sphere of Heaven, — that is to say, of a perfect society ; 
but in the exercise of their daily right of following, 
each man his own lights, these prophets had come to 
regard the two elements as of unequal value ; so that 
strife arose between them, questions were debated, and 
schools were formed. One party, putting freedom be- 
fore holiness, were known as the "Liberty men ;" an- 
other, putting sanctity before freedom, were known as 
the "Holiness men." Putney stood out for holiness; 
Oberlin for liberty ; though both affected to renounce 
the world, and to admit no tutelage but that of God. 
Noyes attacked Oberlin in the "Witness;" Taylor an- 
swered in the " Evangelical ;" and the war of words 
went raging on for years, until Putney fell away into 
quarrels ; and Taylor had used his freedom in a fashion 
to provoke the interference of a Gentile court. 



NEW FOUNDATIONS. 411 

CHAPTER LVI. 

NEW FOUNDATIONS. 

When Putney had become too warm a place for 
JiToyes and his Bible family to live in ; not, as he told 
me, on account of any persecution from the churches 
of religious Vermont ; but solely from the opposition 
of drunken and worthless rowdies ; the Prophet having 
let his house and farm to a Gentile, moved away from 
his native town to Oneida Creek; a place which, ou 
account of its beauty, its remoteness, and its fertility, 
seemed favorable to his plan of tr^-ing, by patient in- 
dustry, to lay a new foundation for social and family 
life. Mary Cragin, who brought with her George, her 
husband, and some other friends already tried in the 
fire, came heartily into his scheme ; becoming to this 
fresh enterprise all that Margaret Fuller would have 
liked to be, and was not, in the less daring settlement 
of Brook Farm. 

About fifty men, with as many women, and nearly 
as many children, put their means together, built a 
frame-house and oflices, bought a patch of land, which 
they began to clear and stock; and giving up the world 
once more, its usages, its rights, declared their family 
separated from the United States, from the society of 
men, even as Abraham and his seed had been separated 
from the people of Hauran. The new Bible Family 
announced itself as a branch of the visible kingdom 
of heaven. Many of the Saints having been at Put- 
uey, they had some experience in the ways of grace ; 
and Noyes laid down for them a rule in their new 
home, which a Gentile would have thought super- 



412 NEW AMERICA. 

fluous at Oneida Creek, — the duty of enjoying life. 
At Putney, said he, they had been too strict; studying 
overmuch ; dealing too harshly with each other's faults. 
In their new home, heaven would not ask from them 
such rigors. If God, he asked them, had meant Adam 
to fast and pray, would he have placed him in a garden 
tempted on every side by delicious fruit ? Man's Maker 
blessed him with appetites, and turned him into a 
clover-field ! And what were these Saints at Oneida 
Creek ? Men in the position of Adam before the fall; 
men without sin; men to whom everything was lawful 
because everything was pure. Why, then, should they 
not eat, drink, and love, to their heart's content, under 
daily guidance of the Holy Spirit ? 

They made no rules, they chose no chiefs. Every 
man was to be a rule to himself, every woman to her- 
self; and as to rulers, they declared that nature and 
education make men masters of their fellows, putting 
them in the places which they are born and trained to 
fill ; another way of saying that God was to rule in 
person, Avith Noyes for his visible pope and king. All 
property was made over to Christ ; and the use of it 
only was reserved for those who had united themselves 
to Him. The wives and children of the Family were 
to be as common as the loaves and fishes ; the very 
soul of the new society being a mystery very difiicult 
to explain in English phrase. 

Through a dozen years of sharp and feverish trial 
the society held its ground. "War without, and want 
within, exposed the brethren to temptations, which no 
bod}^ of zealots but a band of ITew England farmers, arti- 
sans, and professional men, could have lived through. 
Mary Cragin was drowned in the Hudson River, and 
it was long before a woman could be found to take her 
place. Noyes made overtures to Abigail Mei*vin, his 



NEW FOUNDATIONS. 413 

first disciple, whom he still loved in the spirit. Abigail 
would not listen. She is still alive, I may add, and 
Noyes still dreams of drawing her back into his fold. 
Sister Skinner became the female leader ; but she is 
now living at Wallingford ; and I think that Sister 
Jocelyn, a poetess, may now be considered as the pre- 
siding goddess of Oneida Creek. But as power is only 
held by sympathy, her spells may be shared by the two 
singers, Sister Alice and Sister Harriet. I speak as 
one who has lived under the charm. In spite of their 
rude fare and their hard life, strange people came and 
joined them ; a Massachusetts preacher, a Canadian 
trapper, a reader for the London press. Of all these 
converts to the kingdom of heaven, he who might have 
been counted on as the man least likely to be useful to 
such a colony, the Canadian trapper, proved in the end 
to be the actual founder of their fortunes. As yet, the 
Saints had given themselves heart and soul to the 
land, like those Shakers from whom Noyes (as Elder 
Frederick told me) had learnt his first lesson in social 
economy ; but the arts of growing apples, potting 
pears, and making syrups, are too common in America 
for anybody to think of making a fortune by them. 
The Family did its best ; its best was very good. Last 
year, as I saw by their books, they sold twenty-five 
thousand dollars worth of preserved fruits. But the 
lawns and gardens, the stately home, and the busy 
mills of Oneida, were not made out of apple-trees and 
peach-trees. They came, in the main part, from the 
cunning hands of Sewell Newhouse, this Canadian 
trapper. 

One of the great trades of America is that of traps. 
Traps are wanted of many kinds, for the land is covered 
with vermin, from the huge bear of the Rocky Moun- 
tains down to the common field-mouse ; but the Yan- 
3.5* 



414 iV^W^ AMERICA. 

kee mechanic, so prolific in the matter of cork-screws, 
sewing- frames, and nnt-crackers, has left the manufac- 
ture of traps to Solingen and Elberfeld, so that western 
and northern America have been hitherto supplied 
with traps from beyond the Rhine. Now, Brother 
Newhouse, when he settled down to machine work at 
Oneida Creek, saw, as an old trapper, that the G-erman 
article, though good and even cheap in its way, might 
be much improved ; and taking the thing in hand, he 
soon made it lighter in weight, simpler in form, more 
deadly in spring. The Oneida Trap became the talk 
of Madison County and of the State of New York. 
Orders for it poured in ; mechanics were employed, 
forges were built ; and in a few months the German 
article was a saleless article in the New York stores. 
In a single year the Family made eighty thousand dol- 
lars of profit by their traps; and although the income 
has fallen off since others have begun to imitate this 
product of the Saints, the revenue derived from the 
sale of Oneida Traps is still about three thousand 
pounds English money in the year. 

At first thought, there seems to be something comic 
in the fact of a kingdom of heaven being dependent 
for its daily bread on the sale of traps. As I walked 
through the forges with Brotlier Hamilton. T could not 
help saying that such work seemed rather strange for 
a colony of Saints. He answered, with a very grave 
face, that the Earth is lying under a curse, that vermin 
are a consequence of that curse, that the Saints have 
to make war upon them and destroy them, — whence 
the perfect legitiipacy of their trade in traps ! It is 
not in the State of New York, where every man is a 
pleader and a casuist, that any one is found at a loss 
for arguments in favor of that which brings grist to 
his mill. 



NE W FO UNDA TIONS. 4 1 5 

Anyhow, they made the traps, and then the traps 
made them. 

What may be called the home atfairs of the Family 
seem to have been keeping pace with their outward 
and commercial progress. The theory of ruling the 
more disorderly spirits by means of sympathy, was 
raised from an idea into a science ; and the chief busi- 
ness of the evening meetings has now become the 
evolution of this sympathy as a ruling power by means 
of free criticism. I was present at one of these meet- 
ings, when Sydney Jocelyn, a son of the poetess of 
Oneida Creek, was subjected to a searching public 
inquiry. Brother Pitt led the way, describing the 
young man, mentally and morally, pointing out, with 
seeming kindliness, but also with astonishingfrankness, 
all the evil things he had ever seen in Sydney — his 
laziness, his sensuality, his love of dress and show, his 
sauciness of speech, his lack of reverence. Noyes, 
Hamilton, and Bolls followed, with observations almost 
equally severe ; then came Sister Jocelyn, the culprit's 
mother, who certainly did not spare the rod; and after 
her rose up a cloud of witnesses. Most of these per- 
sons spoke of his good deeds, and two or three hinted 
that, with all his faults, Sydney was a man of genius, 
a true saint, a credit to Oneida; but the balance of 
testimony was decidedly against the prisoner on his 
trial. No man is allowed to reply in person and on 
the spot. A friend may put in a good word, so as to 
modify harsh and unfair judgments; but the person 
under censure must retire from the ordeal to his 
chamber, sleep on the catalogue of his virtues, so 
abundantly filled up by iiis associates; and if he has 
anything to say either in acceptance or in refusal of 
the heavy charges made against him by word of mouth, 
he must put that answer into writing, addressed to the 



416 NEW A ME BIG A. 

whole community in the meeting-room, not to any in- 
dividual traducer by name. 

On the evening after this testimony had been heard 
against Sydney Jocelyn, the following letter in reply 



To THE Community. 

I take this occasion to express my thanks for the criticism and 
advice I received last evening, and for the sincerity that was mani- 
fested. 

I wish to thank Mr. Noyes for his sincerity, especially in regard to 
times long past. I well remember when I felt very near him and used 
to converse freely with him ; and I consider those my happiest days. 
I have always regretted my leaving him as I did. I loved him, and 
I, am sure that had I continued with him, I should have been a 
better man and a greater help to him and the Community. I am 
certain that my love for him tlien has helped me a great deal since, 
and has been steadily growing ever since, in spite of adverse cir- 
cumstances, and in my darkest hours his spirit shone forth and 
strengthened me and helped to dispel evil spirits. I wish to con- 
fess my love for Mr. Hamilton and my confidence in him as a leader. 
I thank him sincerely for his long-continued patience with me and 
his untiring efforts to bring me near to Christ and the Community. 

I confess Christ the controller of my tongue and a spirit of hu- 
mility. Sydney. 

What, however, struck me most about these criticisms, 
next to their obvious use in the art of governing men 
who have set aside the human laws, was not so much 
their candor as their subtlety. Many of the observa- 
tions were extremely delicate and deep, showing fine 
powers of analysis sharpened by daily practice 

I should not omit to say, that, although many young 
men bore witness against Sydney, no young woman 
had anything to say about him. The elder ladies were 
free enough, and one ancient dame exhibited a frank- 
ness which would have been hard for a Gentile youth 
to bear in silence. The reason of this was, not that 



NEW FOUNDATIONS. 417 

the girls all liked him, and refrained from criticism, 
but that, as girls and young women, they could have 
had little to do with him, and could therefore have told 
none of his faults. But here we are touching on one 
of the deepest of the many mj^steries of Oneida 
Creek. 

The Family has no lawyer, no doctor, in its ranks ; 
on the other hand, it affects to have no quarrels, and 
to enjoy perfect health. Following the old rule of 
America — a rule derived from provincial England — 
the Family breaks its fast at six in the morning, dines 
at twelve, sups at six in the evening ; very much as 
the Arabs, and the children of nature everywhere, eat 
and drink, at sunrise, noon, and sunset. A few of the 
weaker saints eat flesh of bird and beast ; the more 
advanced eat only herbs and fruit. Brother ISToyes 
eats flesh from habit, but very little of it, having 
proved by trial that it is not necessary for his health. 
A party of the Saints went up into Canada last fall, 
under Newhouse, to trap beaver; they had five weeks 
of very hard life, and came back from the forests 
strong and well. None of the Family drink wine or 
beer, unless it be a dose of either cherry-wine, or 
gooseberry-wine, taken as a cordial. I tasted three 
or four kinds of this home-made wine, and agree with 
Brother Noyes that his people will be better without 
such wicked drinks. 



418 ^EW AMEBIC A. 

CHAPTER LVII. 

PANTAGAMY. 

How shall I describe, in English words, the inner- 
most social life so freely opened to my view by these 
religious zealots of Oneida Creek? To an Arab 
family I could easily shape the matter, so as to leave 
out nothing of importance to m}" tale, for the Arabs 
have derived from their fathers a habit of calling 
things by the simplest names. We English have 
another mood, that of hushing up nature in a fine 
sense of silence ; of spending our curiosity on facts 
about trees, birds, fishes, insects; while we are care- 
fully putting under dark covers anything that relates 
to the life and nature of man. 

George Cragin, one of Mary Cragin's sons, a young 
man of parts and culture, above all, of erect moral 
feeling, fresh from colleo;e, where he has taken his 
medical degree, told me in one of our morning ram- 
bles, as he might have told a brother whom he loved, 
the whole history of his heart — the first budding of 
his affections — the way in which his love was treated 
— his sense of shame — his passionate desires — his 
training in the arts of self-restraint and self-control — 
(which is the discipline of his life as a religious man), 
from the moment of adolescence down to the very 
hour in which we talked together at Oneida Creek. 
That little history of one human soul, in its secret 
strivings, is the strangest story I have ever either 
heard or read. I wrote it down from the young man's 
lips, as we sat under the apple-trees — that tale of all 
he had ever felt, and learned, and suffered, in the 



PAN TAG AMY. 419 

school of love ; told, as he told it, with a grave face, 
a modest manner, and in a scientific spirit; but I have 
no right to print one line of the confession which lies 
before me now. I saw at Oneida Creek a hundred 
records of a similar kind, though most of them were 
less complete in detail and in plan. Some day, in the 
coming years, such records may be gained for science, 
and become the bases, perhaps, of new theories in 
physiology and economics. At present they are sealed, 
and must be sealed. " They are laid up," said Brother 
Bolls, " these histories of emotion, until society is 
ready to receive and use them; when philosophers 
begin to study the life of man as they now study that 
of bees, we Bible Communists shall be able to supply 
them with a multitude of cases carefully observed." 

The very core of their domestic system is a relation 
of the sexes to each other, which they call " a com- 
plex marriage." A community of goods, they say, 
implies a community of wives. Brother Noyes main- 
tains that it is a blunder to say either that a man can 
only love once in his life, or that he can only love one 
object at a time. " Men and women," he says, " find 
universally that their susceptibility to love is not burnt 
out by one honeymoon, or satisfied by one lover. On 
the contrary, the secret history of the human heart 
will bear out the assertion that it is capable of loving 
any number of times, and any number of persons ; 
and that the more it loves, the more it can love. This 
is the law of nature." Hence, in the Bible Family 
living at Oneida Creek, the central domestic fact of 
the household is the complex marriage of its members 
to each other, and to all ; a rite which is to be under- 
stood as taking place on the entrance of every new 
member, whether male or female, into association ; 
and which is said to convert the whole body into one 



420 NEW AMERICA. 

marriage circle ; every man becoming the husband 
and brother of every woman ; every woman the wife 
and sister of every man. Marriage itself, as a rite 
and as a fact, they have abolished forever, in the name 
of true religion ; declaring their belief that so seliish 
and exclusive an institution will be spurned by all 
honest churches the very next moment after the world 
is rid of the false idea that love is an act of sin. 

That I may not be suspected of coloring by a word 
or tint the actual practice of this strange fraternity, I 
will give the statement of his social theory, drawn up 
for me by Noyes himself: — 



Brother JSTgyes on Love. 

"The Communities believe, contrary to the theoiy 
of sentimental novelists and others, that the affections 
can be co-ntroUed and guided, and that the}^ will pro- 
duce far better results when rightly controlled and 
rightly guided, than if left to take care of themselves 
without any restraint or guidance. They entirely re- 
ject the idea, that love is an inevitable fatality which 
must have its own course. They believe the whole 
matter of love and its expression should be subject to 
enlightened self-control, and should be managed for 
the greatest good. In the Communities it is under 
the special supervision of the fathers and mothers : in 
other words, of the wisest and best members, and is 
often under discussion in the evening meetings, and 
is also subordinate to the institution of criticism. The 
fathers and mothers are guided in their management 
by certain general principles, which have been worked 
out and are well understood in the Communities. 
One is termed the principle of the ascending fellow- 
ship. It is regarded as better for the young of both 



PANTAGAMY. 421 

sexes to associate in love with persons older than 
themselves, and, if possible, with those who are spir- 
itual, and have been some time in the school of self- 
control. This is only another form of the popular 
principle of contrast. It is well understood by phys- 
iologists that it is undesirable for persons of similar 
characters and temperaments to mate together. Com- 
munists have discovered that it is not desirable for 
two inexperienced and unspiritual persons to rush into 
fellowship with each other : that it is far better for 
both to associate with persons of mature character 
and sound sense. 

"Another general principle, well understood in the 
Communities, is, that it is not desirable for two persons 
to become exclusively attached to each other — to 
worship and idolize each other — however popular this 
experience may be with sentimental people generally. 
They regard exclusive idolatrous attachment as un- 
healthy and pernicious, wherever it may exist. The 
Communists insist that the heart should be kept free 
to love all the true and worthy, and should never be 
contracted with exclusiveness, or idolatry, or purely 
selfish love in any form. 

"Another principle well known, and carried out in 
the Communit}^ is, that no person shall be obliged to 
receive, at any time, or under any circumstances, the 
attention of those whom they do not like. The Com- 
munities are pledged to protect all their members 
from disagreeable social approaches. Every woman is 
free to refuse every man's attentions. 

" Still another principle is, that it is best for men in 
their approaches to women, to invite personal inter- 
views through the intervention of a third party, for 
two important reasons, viz. : first, that the matter may 
be brought, in some measure, under the inspection of 
36 



422 NEW AMEBIC A. 

the Community, and secondly, that the women may 
decline proposals, if they choose, without embarrass- 
ment or restraint. 

"Under the operation of these general principles, 
but little difficulty attends the practical carrying out 
of the social theory of the Communities. As fast as 
the members become enlightened, the}^ govern them- 
selves by these very principles. The great aim is to 
teach every one self-control. This leads to the greatest 
happiness in love and the greatest good to all " 

The style of living at Oneida Creek gives a good 
deal of power to women, much beyond what they 
enjoy under law ; and this increase of power is a 
capital point in every new system of social order in 
the States. Something of this increased power of the 
female at Oneida Creek, I have seen and felt; and 
Brother Hamilton assures me there is much of charm 
and influence in the woman's life, which I have not 
been able to see and feel. The ladies all seem busy, 
brisk, content ; and those to whom I have spoken on 
this point, all say they are ver}^ happy in their lot. 
Perhaps there is one exception to the rule : that of a 
ladj, whose name I shall not mention, as she dropped 
some hint that she might one day think of going home 
to her friends. 

At first, the world waged war upon Oneida Creek, 
as it had done upon Putney ; making jokes against 
free-love, loading pistols against community of goods. 
Noyes claims, not only in his contest with Baptist and 
Congregational preachers, but in his more dangerous 
conflicts with Madison farmers and herdsmen, that the 
kingdom of Christ established on Oneida Creek should 
be judged as a whole. The sexual principle, he says, 
is the helpmeet of the religious principle; and to all 



PANTAGA3IY. 423 

complaints from without, he answers, "Look at our 
happy circle ; we work, we rest, we study, we enjoy : 
peace reigns in our household ; our 3'oung men are 
healthy, our young women bright; we live well, and 
we do not multiply beyond our wishes I " 

By time the enmity of the world has been overcome ; 
the quicker, since the world begins to see that the 
members of this community, though they may be 
wrong in their interpretation of the ISTew Testament, 
are in real earnest as to living the word which they 
profess. Brother Noyes is now popular in this neigh- 
borhood, where the people judge his disciples by the 
results. 

But a prophet may not waste his life upon a little 
farm, teaching his disciples, by his own example, how 
to live, Noyes finds that he has work to do on a 
larger scale and in a wider field: a new faith to 
expound, an intellectual conquest to achieve ; and for 
these ends of his living as a witness, it is needful for 
him to reside a good deal in New York, at the centre 
of all moral, of all commercial, of all spiritual activi- 
ties and agencies ; where the Bible newspaper, called 
The Circular, is edited and published by his son. 
Enough for him that he visits the two settlements of 
Wallingford and Oneida from time to time ; received 
as a prophet, and implored, like the prophets of old, 
to mediate daily between man and God. 

The Family at Oneida Creek consists of about three 
hundred members, a number which these Bible Com- 
munists say is found by trial to be large enough to 
foster and develop the graces and virtues which belong 
to a perfect Society. Applicants for admission are 
refused from day to day. Three or four oft'ers to come 
in have been refused while I have been lodging at the 
Creek ; the system of life here practised being simply 



424 N^W AMERICA. 

regarded as experimental. The foundations, Brother 
Noyes tells me, are now regarded as having been laid. 
When the details have been wrought out, other Fami- 
lies will be formed in New York and in the New 
England States. 

Before I left Mount Lebanon, I had some conversa- 
tion with Elder Frederick about these people. "You 
may expect to see the Bible Families increase very 
fast," said Frederick, who looks upon their growth 
with anything but a friendly eye ; " they meet the 
desires of a great many men and women in this 
country : men who are weary, women who are fan- 
tastic ; giving, in the name of religious service, a free 
rein to the passions, with a deep sense of repose. 
Women find in them a great field for the afifections. 
The Bible Communists give a pious charter to Free 
Love, and the sentiment of Free Love is rooted in the 
heart of New York." 



CHAPTER LVin. 

YOUNG AMERICA. 

"We do not multiply beyond our wishes," said 
Noyes, in summary of the many beauties and advan- 
tages of what he and his people call the new Bible 
Order. " The baby question is the great question of 
the world," cried Brother Wright, among the Spiritu- 
alists of Providence. What do these reformers mean ? 
In a score of difierent places, people have founded an 
annual baby show, at which they give prizes to the 



YOUNG AMERICA. 425 

best specimen of baby-beauty ; so man}' dollars (or the 
dollars' worth) for tine teeth, for bright eyes, for 
chubby cheeks, for fat arms and hands, for the thou- 
sand nameless merits which a jury of ladies can assert 
in these rosy yearlings. What do these facts imply ? 
Is infant beauty becoming rare ? Has the public mind 
been roused to a consciousness of the decline ? These 
things can hardly be : since Young America crows 
and laughs, and is quite as fat, as rosy, and hilarious, 
as either Young England or Young France. Do the 
facts suggest that babies are growing scarce on this 
American soil ? If this were the case, a great many 
people would cry "Amen" to Brother Wright's 
announcement that the baby question is the chief 
question of these latter times ! 

Now, I have been told that one result of the rapid 
growth in society and in the household of disturbing 
female creeds, is a fact of which the wiser men and 
graver women of New England — the great majority 
of sound and pious people — think very much, though 
they seldom allude to it in public. 

What have I seen and heard in this country, leads 
me to infer that there is a very strange and rather 
wide conspiracy on the part of women in the upper 
ranks — a conspiracy which has no chiefs, no secreta- 
ries, no head-quarters; which holds no meetings, puts 
forth no platform, undergoes no vote, and yet is a real 
conspiracy on the part of many leaders of fashion 
among women; the end of which — if the end should 
over be accomplished — would be this rather puzzling 
fact: — there would be no more baby-shows in this 
country, since there would be no longer any Ameri- 
cans in America. 

In Providence, the capital of Rhode Island, a model 
city in many ways — beautiful and clean, the centre 
3«;* 



426 ^EW AMERICA. 

of a thousand noble activities — I held a conversation 
on this subject with a lady, who took the facts simply 
as she said they are known to her in Worcester, in 
Springfield, in New Haven, in a hundred of the purest 
cities of America, and she put her own gloss and 
color upon them thus: — "A woman's first duty is to 
look beautiful in the eyes of men, so that she may at- 
tract them to her side, and exert an influence over 
them for good ; not to be a household drudge, a slave 
in the nursery, the kitchen, and the school-room. 
Everything that spoils a woman in this respect, is 
against her true interest, and she has a right to reject 
it, as a man would reject an impost that was being 
laid unjustly on his gains. A wife's first thought 
should be for her husband, and for herself as his com- 
panion in the world. Nothing should be ever allowed 
to come between these two." I ventured to ask the 
lady, her husband sitting by, whether children do 
come between father and mother; saying that I had 
two boys and three girls of my own, and had never 
suspected such a thing. " They do," she answered 
boldly; "they take up the mother's time, they im- 
pair her beauty, they waste her life. If you walk 
down these streets" (the streets of Providence) "you 
will notice a hundred delicate girls just blushing into 
W'Omanhood ; in a year they will be married ; in ten 
years they will be hags and crones. No man will 
care for them, on the score of beauty. Their hus- 
bands will find no lustre in their eyes, no bloom upon 
their cheeks. They will have given up their lives to 
their children." 

She spoke with fervor, and with a fixed idea that 
what she was saying to me might be said by any lady 
in open day before all the world ; unconscious, as it 
eeemed to me, that while proudly insisting on wom- 



YOUNG AMERICA. 427 

an's rights, she and those for whom she spoke were 
ready to abandon all woman's duties ; unconscious 
also, as it seemed to me, that in asserting the loss of 
beauty, as a consequence of domestic cares, she and 
those who think with her Avere assuming the very fact 
which almost every father, almost every husband, would 
den3\ Yet, in pious Boston and Philadelphia, no less 
than in wicked New Orleans and New York, this objec- 
tion to become a mother in Israel is one of those radi- 
cal facts which (I am told) must be admitted, whether 
for good or evil; the rapid diminution of native-born 
persons being matter of record in many public acts. 
What my Saratoga friend said to me about his coun- 
trywomen having no descendants left alive in a hun- 
dred years, expresses the fears of many serious men. 

Now, this assertion of the growing scarcity of na- 
tive-born children in the United States will probably 
be new and strange to many ; since, in England, we 
are constantly hearing, in the first place, of the rapid 
growth of the population in America, as compared 
with Europe ; and in the second place, of the high 
value which is set in that new country on every indi- 
vidual child. In some districts, also, the rule which 
we find in the New England States, and among the 
higher classes in Pennsylvania and New York, is not 
observable. In Ohio and Indiana, and generally, in- 
deed, in the western country, the female prides her- 
self on her brood of darlings, and the Missouri boss, 
not having a fine lady for a wife, rejoices in his regi- 
ment of stalwart sons. Here, in New England, in 
New York, it is wholly difierent from what we see in 
yon healthy a-nd vigorous western cities. It may be 
only fashion, it may be only frenzy, but for the pass- 
ing moment, America (I am told) is wasting for the 
want of mothers. In the great cities, among those 



428 ^EW AMERICA. 

shoddy queens who live in monster hotels, among 
those nobler ladies who live in their own houses, it is 
extremely rare to find a woman who has such a brood 
of romping boys and girls about her as an ordinary 
English mother is proud to give her country. The 
rule as to number of oftspring is rather that of Paris 
than that of London. 

On a point of so much delicacy, I should wish to be 
understood as speaking with all reserve, and subject 
to a happy correction of any unconscious errors. A 
stranger must not expect to see down into all the 
depths of this mystery of domestic life. Ladies m.ay 
be shy of debating such topics, and with men who 
are not their physicians, it is right that they should 
abstain from conveying their creed by hints. But 
the fact that many of these delicate and sparkling 
women do not care to have their rooms full of rosy 
darlings is not a matter of inference. Allusions to 
the nursery, such as in England and Germany would 
be taken by a 3^oung wife as compliments, are here 
received with a smile, accompanied by a shrug of un- 
doubted meaning. You must not wish an American 
lady, in whose good graces you desire to stand, many 
happy returns of a christening day ; she might resent 
the w^ish as an offence; indeed, I have known a young 
and pretty woman rise from a table and leave the 
room, on hearing such a favor expressed towards her 
by an English guest. 

Now,' what, if this is true, can be the end of such a 
fashion among the upper classes, except the rapid dis- 
placement of the old American stock? Statesman, 
patriot, moralist, here is a question to engage your 
thoughts ! The Irish and the Germans rush into 
every vacant space. Is it pleasant for any one to 
consider that in three or four generations more there 



YOUNG AMEBIC A. 429 

may be no Americans left on the American soil ? In 
the presence of such a possibility, have the noble 
churches, the many conservative schools of New Eng- 
land, no mission to assume? 

The tale which seems to be so sadly written on the 
floor of every room you enter, is also told at large in 
the census returns. Where are the American States 
in which the birth-rate stands the highest in propor- 
tion to the number of people ? Is it found highest in 
pious New Hampshire, in moral Vermont, in Sober 
Maine? All fancies, all analogies, would have led us 
to expect it; but the facts are wholly cut of keeping 
with conjecture. In these three pious, moral, and 
sober States, the birth-rate is lowest. The only 
States in which there is a high and healthy rate of 
natural increase, are the wild countries peopled by 
new settlers, — Oregon, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, 
— States in which, it is said, there are few fine ladies 
and no bad fashions. Strangest of all strange things 
is the example set to the rest of these States by Mas- 
sachusetts, the religious centre of New England, the 
intellectual light of the United States. In Massachu- 
setts, the young women marry ; but they seldom be- 
come mothers. The women have made themselves 
companions to their husbands ; brilliant, subtle, solid 
companions. At the same time the power of New 
England is passing over to the populous West, and a 
majority of the rising generation of Boston is either 
of German or of Irish birth. 

This rather dismal prospect for Young America is 
not a consequence of the Germans and Irish put to- 
gether exceeding the natives in number. Those na- 
tionalities are large, no doubt; but as yet they have 
not turned the scale. The list of marriages still 
exhibits a preponderance of natives ; and it is only 



430 ^^^ AMERICA. 

when you come to the register of bn-ths that the ac- 
count runs all another way. 

Under the constitution of the United States, num- 
bers are strength ; numbers make the laws ; numbers 
pay the taxes"; numbers vote away the land. Power 
lies with the majority ; and the majority in Massachu- 
setts is going over to the Irish poor, to the Fenian 
circles and the Molly Maguires. At present the 
foreigners count only one in five ; but as more chil- 
dren are being born to that foreign minority than to 
the native majority, the proportions are changing 
every year. In twenty years, those foreign children 
will be the majority of men in Massachusetts. 

How will the intellectual queens of Boston bear the 
predominance of such a class ? 



CHAPTER LXIX. 

MANNERS. 

""What do you think of this country?" said to me 
an English lady, who had spent two years of her life 
in the Middle States, Ohio and Kentucky. Though I 
had then been five whole days in New York, I had 
not come to a final judgment on the virtues of thirty 
millions of people ; so I answered my friend with a 
cowardly evasion, that it seemed to me a free country. 
"Free !" cried the lady with a shrug; "you are fresh 
to it now ; when you have lived here three or four 
months, I shall be glad to learn what you have seen 
and thought. Free ! The men are free enough ; but, 



MANNERS. 431 

then, what they call their freedom, J should style their 
impudence." 

Those words are often in my thoughts ; never more 
than they have been to-day, while strolling through 
these streets of Philadelphia, now that I have fulfilled 
my terms and travelled over ten thousand miles of 
American ground. A lady fresh from May Fair, used 
only to the ways of well-bred men, to the silent ser- 
vice of her maid and groom, would be sure to fall, like 
my questioner, into the error of supposing that the 
only liberties to be found in America are the liberties 
which people take with you. 

All men of Teutonic race are apt to cast big looks 
on the strangers whom they meet by chance. It is a 
habit of our blood. The Norse gods had it ; and we, 
their heirs, can hardly ever see an unknown face, an 
unfamiliar garb, without feeling in our hearts the 
longing to hoot and pelt. In presence of a strange 
man, a gentleman puts on his armor of cold disdain, a 
rough looks out for a convenient stone. We bear this 
impulse with us on our journeys to and fro about the 
earth ; Englishmen carrying it in the form of pride, 
Americans in the form of brag. Of course, it is not 
the way with all. Men of large hearts, of wide expe- 
rience, of gentle nurture, will neither wrap their pride 
in an oftensive coldness, nor obtrude their power in a 
boastful phrase. But some of the rank and file, hav- 
ing neither large hearts nor wide experience, nor 
gentle nurture, will always do so ; enough of them, 
perhaps, to create in a stranger's mind the impression 
that this English reserve, this Yankee brag, are notes 
of the Anglo-Saxon race. I shall not say which of 
these two methods of announcing our riches, gifts, 
titles, powers, and possessions — our strength, our 
glory, our superiority — is the more galling to men of 



4S2 ^EW AMERICA. 

another stock; Italians and Frenchmen tell me they 
have given the palm of otience to onr haughty and 
unbending pride. A Yankee says to them plainly, 
either in v^^ord or look: "I am as good as you are — 
better;" they know the worst at once. An English- 
man says nothing ; they have no defence against him; 
and his silence is both galling and intrusive. N'ow, 
we English are apt to judge American shortcomings 
very much as Frenchmen and Italians judge our own, 
with the addition of a family pique ; so that our 
cousins of this other side come out from such trials of 
their imperfections very much tattered and torn. 

In an old country like England, where society is 
stronger than among our cousins in this new home 
— where personal fancies are held in check by public 
sentiment, acting in the name of fashion — ordinary 
men and women are apt to consider smoothness of 
surface, softness of voice, conformity of style, as of 
higher moment than they would appear to judges of 
the stamp of Mill. Of course, no man of the world, 
even though he should happen to be a philosopher, 
will despise the charms of a good manner. The lady 
who sits next to me at dinner, being well-dressed, 
speaking in low tones, eating her food daintily, smil- 
ing on occasion sweetly, does me, by her presence, 
a positive service. The gentleman across the table, 
who is always telling the company, in looks and tones, 
that he is as good as they are — better than they are — 
takes all flavor from the dish, all bouquet from the 
wine. Manners may be no more than the small circu- 
lating coinage of society ; but when these bits of silver 
have the true mint-mark upon them, they will pass 
for all that they are worth in every place, at every 
hour of the day. In the moment of a quick demand 
f few cents in the purse may be of higher value to a 



MANNERS. 433 

man than a bag of dollars laid up in a bank. "Wliat 
makes a good manner of so much worth as to have 
raised it into one of the line arts, is the fact that in 
th(' free commerce of men and women, none but the 
minor debts of society are likely to arise between 
guest and guest. In the street, in the hotel, in the 
railway-train, a man's character hardly ever comes 
into play. What a man is may be of little account to 
the passer-by ; what he does may either gladden that 
passer-by with delightful thoughts, or torture him into 
agonies of shame. 

The Yankee of our books and farces — the man who 
was forever whittling a yard of stick, putting his heels 
out of window, grinding his quid of pig-tail, squirting 
his tobacco-juice in your face, while, in breathless and 
unsuspecting humor, he ran, to your amazement and 
amusement, through a string of guesses, reckonings, 
and calculations, as to what you were, whence you 
came, what you were doing, how much money you 
were worth — as to whether you were single or mar- 
ried, how many children you had, what you thought 
of everything, and whether your grandmother was alive 
or dead — that full embodiment of the great idea of 
Personal Freedom is not so common and so lively as 
he would seem to have been some twenty years ago. 
Seeking for him everywhere, finding a shadow of him 
only, and that but seldom, I have missed him very 
much ; an element of extravagance and humor that 
would have been very welcome to me in long, grave 
journeys, which were often a thousand miles in silence. 
In the wagon from Salt Lake to Kearney, in the boat 
from Omaha to St. Louis, in the car from Indianapolis 
to New York, I have often longed for the coming of 
one of those vivacious rattles, who used (as we have read) 
to poke his stick into your ribs, his nose into your con- 
37 



434 N^W AMEBIC A. 

versation, to tell you every thing he did n't know, and 
to pull out 3'our eye-teeth generally ; but he no more 
came in answer to my wish than the witty cabman 
comes in Dublin, the stolid Pasha in Damascus, the 
punctilious Don in Madrid — those friends of our 
imagination, whom we love so much on paper, and 
whom we never meet in our actual lives ! 

In the room of this lost humorist, you find at your 
elbow in the car, in the steamboat, at the dinner-table, 
a man who may be keen and bright, but who is also 
taciturn and grave ; asking few questions, giving curt 
answers ; a man occupied and reserved; on the whole, 
rather English in his silence and his pride than Yankee 
(of the book pattern) in his loquacit}' and his smartness. 
Perhaps he whittles ; perhaps he chews ; assuredly he 
spits. What impels a man to whittle when he is busy 
— while he is planing a campaign, composing an epic, 
mapping out a town ? Is it an English habit, lost to 
us at home, like rocking in arm-chairs and speaking 
through the nose ? I hardly think so. Is it a relic of 
some Indian custom ? The Algonquins used to keep 
their reckonings by means of cuts and notches on a 
twig; and when Pocahontas came to England, her 
followers brought with them a bundle of canes, on 
which they were to keep accounts of what they saw 
among the Pale-faces. A\^hittling may be a remnant 
of this Indian custom ; and the gentleman resting on 
the next bench to me, without a thought of Pocahontas 
and her people, may be whittling notes for his election- 
speeches on his stick. I wonder whether he learned 
to chew at school ? I wonder how he felt when he first 
put pig-tail into his mouth ? 

In a railway-train, in a ball-room, in the public 
street, you have much to do with a man's habits and 
behavior, not much with his virtues and acquirements. 



MANNERS. 435 

In my journey from Columbus to Pittsburg, I spent 
about twenty hours in company with a Missouri boss. 
Now boss is a master (the word is Dutch, and has gone 
westward from ISTew York). In London he would 
have been a capitalist, in Cairo an etfendi ; in one city 
he would have had the bearing of a gentleman, in the 
other he would have had the aspect of a prince. He was 
a good fellow, as I came to know ; but he made no ap- 
proach in his dress, in his speech, in his bearing, to 
that elegant standard which in Europe denotes the gen- 
tleman. A fine lady would not have touched him with 
her fan. 

"Whence comes that nameless grace of style, — that 
tender and chivalric bearing, which, in rounding off 
all angles, smoothing away all knots, makes a man ap- 
pear lovely and acceptable in the eyes of all his fellows ? 
Is it an afi'air of race ? We English have it only in 
degree ; a little more perhaps, naturallj^ than the 
Dutch. It is a gift that never comes to us easily and 
at once ; we have to toil for it long, and we seldom 
win it when we try. No man, says an old adage, has 
a fine accent, an easy carriage, a perfect presence, 
whose grandmother was not a lady born ; for in society, 
as in heraldry, it takes three generations of men to 
make a gentleman. Thus, in our common speech, we 
imply by a good manner a gentle descent, and by the 
term high breeding we express our sense of personal 
charm. 

But this common use of language fails to express 
and explain the action of a general rule. Among 
Gothic tribes, in whom the tendency towards individual 
freak is strong, this outward and conceding softness of 
demeanor may be slow to come and swift to go ; it 
may only come to men who have ease and leisure, 
brightened by moral culture, and by intellectual toil. 



430 NJ^W AMERICA. 

In the Latin, in the Greek, in the Arab, it would al- 
most seem as though it required no time to grow, no 
effort to improve. An Italian rustic has often a finer 
manner than an English earl. Why is this so? Not 
because country habits are a liberal education, as the 
poets feign ; an English plough-boy having no rival 
in Europe for gross stupidity and awkwardness, unless 
he can find his mate in that Dutch peasant whose 
name of "boor" has passed into our language as the^ 
fullest expression for lout and clown. Even the Italian, 
elegant as his bearing always is, cannot stand in com- 
parison with the more supple Greek. A native of 
Athens, Smyrna, Khodes, will fleece you with a grace 
that more than half inclines you to forgive him for the 
cheat. But he, again, must yield the palm before the 
easy and unstudied beauty of an Arab's mien ; a man 
whose every gesture is a lesson in the highest of social 
arts. When you are in an Eastern city, even in an 
Eastern desert, the question is forever springing to 
your lips — who taught yon muleteer to bow and smile ; 
who gave that fluent grace to yon tawny Sheikh ? A 
lady, coming into an Arab's camp at night, would feel 
no dread, unless she had been warned by previous 
trials : for the Sheikh, under whose canvas tent she 
may find herself, has, in a perfection rarely seen, that 
gift of gait and speech which in the west is only to be 
sought, not always to be found, in men of the highest 
rank. How does the Bedouin gain this princely air? 
Not from his wealth and power — a herd of goats, a 
flock of sheep, are his sole estate ; not from, his mental 
efforts — he can hardly read and write. The Sheikh 
who inspires this confidence, so far from being a prince, 
a priest, bound by his nature and his habit to do right, 
may be a thief, an outlaw, an assassin, after his kind, 
with the scorch of fire and the stain of blood upon 



3IANNEBS. 437 

that hand which he waves with a bewitching grace. 
Yet he looks the prince. All Orientals have this name- 
less charm. A S3'rian peasant welcomes you to his 
stone hut, makes his sign of the cross, and hopes that 
"Peace will be with you," after a fashion which a 
caliph could not mend. Ease is the element in which 
he lives ; grace seems to have become his second nature ; 
and he moves with the dignity of his high-born mare. 
When you quit the East, you leave some part of 
that fine air, that flattering courtesy, behind you. Less 
of it is found in Alexandria than in Cairo ; less in 
Smyrna than at Damascus. Sailing westward, you will 
lose it more and more ; by a scale of loss that might 
be measured on a chart. Speaking roundly, the gift 
of seeming soft and gracious, which we call by the 
name of Manner, declines in a regular order from 
East to West ; in Europe, it is best in Stamboul, worst 
in London ; in the world (so far as I have seen), it is 
best in Cairo, worst at Denver and Salt Lake. And 
the rule which governs the ends of these great chains, 
holds good for all the links between them ; the finer 
courtesies of life being more apparent in St. Louis 
than Salt Lake ; in New York than in St. Louis ; in 
London than in iS^ew York ; in Paris than in London ; 
in Rome than in Paris ; in Athens than in Rome ; in 
Stamboul than in Athens; in Cairo and Damascus 
than in Stamboul. If I ever go westward to Cali- 
fornia, I shall expect to find the manners worse in San 
Francisco than they are at St. Louis and Salt Lake. 
31* 



438 NEW A3IEBICA. 

CHAPTER LX. 

LIBERTIES. 

Will any one learned in the ways of nature say 
what is the cause of a decline in manners which may 
be noted at every stage of a journey from the Usbeyah 
to Pennsylvania Avenue ? What is the secret of the 
art itself? Whence comes this gentle craft, of which 
the Saxon has so little, the Persian -has so much? 
Man for man, a Persian is less noble than an Arab, an 
Arab than a Gaul, a Gaul than a Briton ; why then 
should the lower race excel the higher in this subtle 
test of bearing? Is manner nothing more than a 
name for the absence of liberty? Is that soft reserve, 
that bated voice, that deprecating tone, no more than 
a sacrifice of* individual force to social order? Are 
we polite because we are not ourselves ? In short, is 
a good manner a liberal accomplishment or only a 
slavish grace? 

Two facts may be taken as proved. 1. That charm 
has scarcely any aftection for busy commonwealths, 
No free people has much of it to spare ; no servile 
nation is without it in abundance. In America, the 
Negro has it, the Cheyenne has not; in Europe, the 
Greek has more of it than the Gaul; in Asia, the 
Persian and Hindoo have more of it than the Arme- 
nian and the Turk. 2. It is rarely found among men 
of the highest genius. Whether in arts or letters, 
manner means mediocrity : mannerism of style is but 
a name for the absence of individuality, of invention, 
of original power. Men who show great force of 
chai-acter cannot show a fine manner, which implies 



LIBERTIES. 489 

polish, smoothness, and conformity. Hence, men of 
the higher genius are called eccentrics and originals. 

Might not a rule be laid down which should express 
an approach to the truth in some such words as these: 
a people has this exceeding grace of spirit in exact 
proportion to the length and strength of the despotism 
under which it has been schooled ? 

I do not say that such will be found the final form 
of this rule. As yet we have few materials, and no 
fixed principles, for a science of the Life of Man. 
But if a large experience and induction were at some 
future time to show that such is the truth, the fact 
would serve to explain some points which in our 
present state of knowledge give us so great pleasure. 
Men of poetic habits, when they hear of nations fall- 
ing off in manners as they gain in liberty and power, 
are apt to grieve, and almost to despair. That nations 
do fall oft" in manners with the advance of freedom 
and prosperity, is one of those facts which are open, 
obvious, uniform ; written in every figure, told in 
every glance. Go where you list, from Jerusalem to 
Florence, from Paris to New York, the tale is every- 
where the same. The Eftendine families in Zion are 
noticed as being far less aftable, now that, after Arab 
measure, they are rich and free, than when the Holy 
City was an Arab camp, governed by a pasha of two 
tails, administering his rough injustice in the Jaffa 
gate. A Greek is far less winsome in his ways, less 
sweet and pleasant to have about you, now that he 
has ceased to be a slave. The Roman Jew, so smooth- 
ly spoken, so obsequious to your wish, in the days of 
yore, has now put on a saucy and audacious air. Free 
Florence has lost her name for sweet and tender 
courtesy since she has ceased to gaze into the Aus- 
trian's eyes, and make humble love to the Austrian's 



440 NEW AMERICA. 

boot. France threw down her repute for bows and 
smiles, when she rose up in her wrath to slay her ty- 
rants and break her chains. Yes, with the growth of 
liberty, the school of manners seems to be everywhere 
decaying. A Suabian is less polite in Omaha than in 
Augsburg ; a Munster man in Baltimore than in 
Cork. Fritz will not say " good evening " to you on 
Lake Erie, Pat will not touch his cap to you in New 
York. Are not these changes the result of general 
laws? And if they be, what are those laws? 

If it should appear that the fine favor which we call 
manner is but a note and sign of long submission to 
a master's will, you may find in the fact some grain 
of consolation even when a passing rowdy squirts his 
tobacco on your boots. This negro at the corner will 
brush them clean ; doing his service for you with a 
soft alacrity, a submissive laughter, to charm your 
heart. Yesterday, this fellow was a slave, subject to 
cuffs and stripes, compelled to cringe and fawn. His 
son will have a way of his own ; and his son's son, 
with a vote at the poll, a balance at the bank, will not 
be found so meek in spirit as to lie in the dust at your 
descendant's feet. Like every free man born on this 
American soil, he will probably say in gait and tone, 
"Ask me not to serve you, — am I not as good as 
you?" 

It is well to know that the rough liberties for which 
our cousins have exchanged, as a rule, the deferential 
habits of their fathers, are of a solid and fruitful kind. 
If they have sold their birthright of civility, they have 
not sold it for a mess of pottage. Indeed, they may 
be said to have made a very good market of their 
manners ; having got in return for them houses, votes, 
schools, wages; a splendid present for themselves, a 



LIBERTIES. 441 

magnificent future for their clnldren. They have risen 
in society ; they have ceased to be servants. 

The relation of a French cook, of an English butler, 
of a Swiss valet, to his master, is a thing unknown in 
this country, whether you search for it on the Ohio, 
on the Delaware, on the sea-shore. Here you have 
no masters, no servants. No native white will serve 
another. Ask your friends in Richmond, in New 
York, about the birthplace of their domestics ; you 
will find that their serving men and serving women 
are all either Irish or negro. A lady cannot get a 
native maid, her husband cannot get a native groom. 
Tempt a street huckster with as many dollars as would 
buy you a dozen clerks, and the chances are many 
that he will say: "I am as good as you ; I have the 
same vote as you ; I can go into Congress as well as 
you ; I may be President as soon as you ; " and the 
facts as between you and him are mainly as he puts 
them. A working tailor lives at the White House. 
One of the most popular Presidents since Washington 
died, was a log-cleaver, a woodsman. In this free 
country all careers lie open. They have always been 
so in yon Northern States; and, since the War, this 
Northern rule is fast becoming the law for every part. 
Even in Virginia there will soon be no mean whites. 
In Ohio, birth is* nothing; in Cincinnati, I have heard 
it said, that no man has any need for a grandmother. 
Each man must make himself. Nor does it greatly 
matter what a man has been some dozen years ago ; 
one year is an age in this swift country; indeed, this 
liberal dealing runs to such excess, that if a fellow has 
a smooth tongue, and keeps himself clean, the fact of 
his having passed a term in Auburn will not weigh 
heavily on his neck. Morrisey, the New York gam- 
bler, once a pugilist, then a prisoner, afterwards a 



442 NEW AMERICA. 

faro-banker, may wear white kid, and give his vote in 
the Capitol. To pluck, to enterprise, to genius, every 
office in the land is open prize. 

No white native, therefore, need despair so far as to 
sink into the grade of servant: the position, as he 
would call it, of a stranger and a slave. If he should 
fall so low, he would be lost forever in the minds of 
his former friends, like a Brahman who had forfeited 
his caste. 

ISTor do you find among these free citizens of the 
Great Republic much of that show of deference which 
in France and England would be understood, on both 
sides, as the expectation of a silver coin. 'No native 
American ever takes a vail. A driver in the street may 
cheat you, but he will not take from you a cent be- 
yond his claim. No porter will accept a gift of service ; 
no messenger will accept a reward for haste. Some- 
times a news-boy will object to receiving change out 
of a greenback ; more than once I have had my couple 
of cents thrown back into my lap. Thus it happens 
that no one ever proffers help in your little straits ; 
for no one being employed in looking out for doles, 
your trouble is not his aifair. When you are either 
young to the country, or careless of its ways, you may 
have to fetch water to your room, lift your box into 
the car, take your letter to the post ; in short, do every 
little act for yourself which would be done for you in 
London for a shilling, in Paris for a franc. Where no 
man needs your vails, no man watches to do you good. 
Help yourself, — this is a stranger's motto and neces- 
sity in these free States. 

Perhaps, the liberty which is more than any other 
likely to amuse a traveller in this country, is the ft-ee- 
dom with which every one helps himself to anything 
he may want. In a railway-car, anybody who likes 



LIBERTIES. 443 

it will sit down in your place, push away your satchel, 
seize upon your book. Thought of asking your leave 
in the matter may not occur to him for hours. I 
lent a book to a man in the car at St. Louis ; he kept 
it two days and nights ; and then asked me if I was 
reading it myself. On my saying yes, he simply an- 
swered, "It is amusing ; you will have a good time." 
On the Pennsylvania central line, a lady entered into 
my state-room, on pretence of looking out upon a 
river; she kept my seat, for which I had paid an extra 
fare, until her journey ended. If 3^ou ask for any dish 
at dinner, your neighbor, should the fancy take him, 
will snatch a portion of it from beneath your nose. 
When I was leaving Salt Lake City, Sister Alice, the 
daughter of Brigham Young, put up some very fine 
apples in a box for me to eat by the way ; at a station 
on the Plains I found that a lady, a fellow-passenger 
in the wagon, had been opening my box, and helping 
herself to the fruit; and when she saw me looking at 
her, with some surprise perhaps visible on my face, 
she merely said, "I am trying whether your apples are 
better than mine." In the western country, a man will 
tire oft' your pistols, try on your gauntlets. Any one 
thinks himself at liberty to clean his clothes with your 
bruslies, run his hair through your comb, and warm 
himself in your great-coat. 

These things are not meant to be often si ve. A fel- 
low gives and takes; lends you a buftalo-hide on a 
frosty night; helps himself to your drinking-cup at the 
morning well. The manner is not fine ; but the hearti- 
ness is pleasant, and you w^ould be unintelligible if 
you made complaint. Every one you meet has the 
way which in Europe would be called original. 



444 NEW AMERICA. 

CHAPTER LXI. 

LAW AND JUSTICE. 

When Secretary Seward put to me the question 
which every American puts to an Englishman travel- 
ling in the United States, "Well, sir, what do you 
think of our country?" I ventured to reply, partly at 
least in jest, "I find your country so free that nobody 
seems to have any rights." As in all such sayings, 
there was some exaggeration in these words; yet they 
convey an impression dwelling on my mind. 

No men in the world, not even we English, from 
whom they derive the virtue, boast so constantly, and 
with so much reason, of being a law-loving, a law- 
abiding people as these Americans. Having no State 
religion, no authentic Church, they seem to cling to 
the written Law, whether it be that which was fixed 
by the Constitution, that which has been voted by 
Congress, or only that which is defined by the Supreme 
Court, as to a rock in the midst of a storm. 

Few things in this free country stand above the reach 
of cavil. That light which in Europe is said to beat 
upon a throne, here beats upon every object, whether 
high or low. Nothing can be done in secret ; no one 
is permitted to live in private. Every man drives in a 
glass coach, and everybody flings a stone at him as he 
dashes past. Censure is the world's first duty ; in some 
societies, such as the Bible Communists', criticism is 
adopted as the only governing power. Life is a Broad- 
way procession. From the elegant frivolities of a la- 
d^^'s boudoir in Madison Square, down to the midnight 
follies enacted in the cellars of the Louvre, everything 



LAW AND JUSTICE. 445 

in yon city of New York is known, is seen, is judged 
by public opinion. The pulpit is accused, the press 
suspected, the government condemned. Capital is 
assailed and enterprise is watched. Each man thinks 
for himself, judges for himself, about the most deli- 
cate, the most sacred things — love, marriage, prop- 
erty, morality, religion. Law and justice do not always 
escape this rage for popular debate ; but by common 
assent of minds, they are regarded as the very last sub- 
jects to be handled, and only then to be touched with 
reverential hand. 

"Whether it be constitutional, general, state, or only 
municipal, Law is nobly respected by the native Amei-- 
ican. The Judge of the Supreme Court is treated in 
Washington with a degree of respect unknown to 
lawyers in Europe ; a respect akin to that which is 
paid to an archbishop in Madrid and to a cardinal in 
Rome. The State Judges take the places in society 
held among us by bishops. Even the village justice, 
though he is elected by the crowd, is always styled 
the squire. 

This deference to the Law, and to every one who 
wears the semblance of lawful authority, is so complete 
in America, as to occasion a traveller some annoyance 
and more surprise. Every dog in office is obeyed with 
such unquestioning meekness, that every dog in office 
is tempted to become a cur. It is rare, indeed, to find 
a servant of the public civil and obliging. He may 
be something better, but assuredly he is neither help- 
ful nor deferential. A news-boy will not serve you 
with a ' Ledger,' an ' Liquirer,' unless he likes. A 
policeman hardly condescends to show you the nearest 
way. A railway-guard will put you in this car, in 
that car, among the ladies, among the rowdies, among 
the smokers, just as he lists. A crowd of busy and 
3S 



446 N^W AMERICA. 

free Americans will stand about, and bear this in- 
solence of authorit}^ with a slirug, saying they cannot 
help it. When coming np from Richmond by the 
night train, Mr. Laurence Oliphant, myself, and many 
more, arrived at Acquia Creek about one o'clock ; the 
passage thence to Washington takes four hours ; and 
as we were much fatigued, and had only these four 
hours for rest, we begged that the keys of our berths 
might be given to us at once. " I '11 attend to you 
when I'm through," was the only answer we could 
get; and we waited — a train of ladies, young folks, 
gentlemen — until the man had arranged his aii'airs, 
and smoked his pipe, more than an hour. Yet not 
one word was said, except by Mr. Oliphant and myself 
The man was in office : excuse enough in Amei-ican 
eyes for doing as he pleased. This is the kind of 
circle in which they reason; take away his office, and 
the man is as good as we are ; all men are free and 
equal ; add office to equality, and he rises above our 
heads. More than once I have ventured to tell my 
friends, that this habit of deferring to law and lawful 
authority, good in itself, has gone with them into 
extremes, and would lead them, should they let it 
grow, into the frame of mind for yielding to the usur- 
pation of any bold despot who may assail their liberties, 
like Csesar, in the name of law and order ! 

Sometimes, this profound respect for Law gives rise 
to singular situations. I may name two cases, one of 
which was told me at Clear Creek, near Denver, the 
other in Cass Township, Pennsylvania. 

Black Bear, a Cheyenne warrior, who had scalped a 
white man, was arrested by the people of Denver. 
Across the English border he would have been tried 
on the spot and hung, there being no doubt whatever 
about his guilt ; but the American people have such 



LAW AND JUSTICE. 447 

lofty regard for the forms of justice, that they will not 
suffer a murderer to be tried for his life, except under 
all the delicate conditions of a white man's court. 
Black Bear was brought from Colorado to Washington, 
two thousand miles from the scene of his crime ; he 
had clever counsel to defend him ; and the chief 
witnesses of his crime being for away, the jury gave 
him the benefit of all their doubts. Acquitted by the 
court, he became a lion in the city, especially among 
romantic women. He was taken to the Indian bureau ; 
he was allowed to shake hands with the President ; 
pistols and belts were given to him ; and he returned 
to the Cheyenne camp a big chief, appearing to his 
own people to haye been decorated and promoted by 
the white men, for no other cause than that of having 
taken their brother's scalp. 

AYilliam Dunn, of Cass Township, Potts ville, was a 
manager of mines for the New York and Schuylkill 
Company ; a gentleman and a man of science, with a 
great command over the coalfields of that picturesque 
and prosperous region of Pennsylvania. I have spent 
some da3'S in that fine district, where I heard this 
story from the lips of his successor. Dunn was going 
about his duty, in the public street, in open day, when 
an Irish workman met him face to face, and with an 
insolent gesture asked for a holiday. " You cannot 
have it," said Dunn ; " go back to your work." With- 
out a word more, the Irishman drew a pistol from his 
belt and shot him dead. The murderer, taken red- 
handed, in the public street, standing by the body of 
his victim, was brought to trial in Pottsville and — 
acquitted. In that great coalfield, with towns and 
cities vv^hich have grown up in the forest in a dozen 
years, the Irish are sixty thousand strong. They are 
very poor, they are grossly illiterate : but every man 



448 NEW AMERICA. 

has a vote, and the sixty thousand vote together as 
one man. Hence they carry all elections in the coal- 
field; elect the judges, serve on the juries, control the 
courts. Among these men there is a secret society 
called The Molly Maguires, the name and habits of 
which they have introduced from Ireland. The judge 
who tried this murderer was elected by the Molly 
Maguires ; the jurors who assisted him were them- 
selves Molly Maguires. A score of Molly Maguires 
came forward to swear that the assassin was sixty 
miles from the spot on which he had been seen to fire 
at William Dunn. Counsel submitted that this was 
one of the many cases of mistaken identity which 
adorn our legal annals ; the judge summed up the 
case in the spirit of this suggestion ; and the jurors 
instantly returned a verdict of Not Guilty. That 
ruffian is still alive. The great company whose servant 
had been slain could do nothing but engage another 
in his place. One gentleman to whom they ofi:ered 
the post, replied that he would not take it unless he 
could be armor-plated. 

When you speak of this case to the eminent men 
of the Pennsylvania bar, they answer that these people 
cannot be punished, and that you must wait and work 
for a better state of things. " These criminals," they 
say, in substance, "are not Americans ; they come to 
us from Europe ; squalid, ignorant, brutal ; they drink, 
they quarrel, they form secret associations ; in their 
own country they paid their rent with a blunderbuss, 
in this country they ask for a holiday with a pistol, 
and demand an advance of wages with a blazing 
torch. But what are we to do ? Can we close our 
ports against these immigrants ? Should we change 
our judicial system, the pride of thirty-six millions of 
solid and steadfast people, to punish a mob of degraded 



POLITICS. 449 

Irish peasants?" So tliey allege, with a noble con- 
fidence in moral growth, that this evil must be left to 
cure itself; as they reckon it will do in five-and- 
twenty years, " The children of these Molly Ma- 
guires," says the keen and brilliant mayor of Phila- 
delphia, Morton M'Michael, "will be decent people; 
we shall put them through our schools and train them 
in our ways ; their children, again, will be rich and 
good Americans, who will hardly have heard of such 
a society as the Molly Maguires." 



CHAPTER LXIL 

POLITICS. 

Society (the voluntary grouping of many units for 
their common help) is made and held together by the 
poise and balance of two radical powers in man — 
akin to those centrifugal and centripetal forces which 
compel the planets to revolve about the sun — the 
separating spirit of freedom, and the combining spirit 
of union. Always acting, and in opposite ways, these 
forces hold each other in check ; that shaking masses 
into units, this drawing units into masses; and it is 
only in their nice adjustment to each other that a 
nation can enjoy political life in the midst of so<;ial 
peace. In all living men, these powers of separation 
and attraction are nearly equal, like the corresponding 
forces in all moving matter; but some races of men 
have a little more of the first power, others have a 
little more of the second power. The Latin race has 
a quicker sense of union than the Gothic race; the 
38* 



450 NEW AMERICA. 

Gothic race has a keener love of liberty than the 
Latin race. Each may be capable of uniting public 
order with personal independence; but the paths by 
which they will separately arrive at such an end, 
diverging from the common line, will reach their goal 
by loops and zigzags hardly perceptible to each other. 
A Latin people will dread the liberty for which it 
longs ; a Gothic people will distrust the government 
of its choice. Compare the structure of a Teutonic 
Church with that of the Roman Church ; compare the 
political life of America with that of France ! Rome 
has a compactness of organization, to which neither 
London, Augsburg, nor Geneva can attain ; while 
London, Augsburg, and Geneva have a freedom to 
which Rome cannot even aspire. Li France, again, 
the tendency of public thought, not of a school, of a 
party only, but of the solid people, is to sustain 
authority against the demands of personal right; in 
America, on the contrary, the action of all political 
bodies, of all colleges and corporations, of all private 
teachers, agitators, and philosophers, is directed, now 
consciously, now unconsciously, towards weakening 
the public force in favor of individual rights. France 
has not lost her love of libert}^, nor America forgotten 
her respect for law ; for these are elementary instincts 
in the human heart ; without which, in some form of 
combination and adjustment, society, as we understand 
it, could not be. But iu the large results of thought, 
in the wide action of politics, one nation is always 
tending towards military rule, the second nation 
towards popular rule ; France seeking safety in the 
drill, the discipline, the armaments of a camp, 
America in the agitations of a pulpit, in the explo- 
sions of a press, in which every man has an unlicensed 
right of speech and thought. 



POLITICS. 451 

Each of these tendencies implies a peril of its own. 
If the Latin is apt to sacrifice independence to empire, 
the Teuton is no less apt to sacrifice empire to inde- 
pendence. In France, the danger lies in too much 
compression — in America it lies in too much separa- 
tion — of the political units. 

For twenty years before the ^Var broke out, the 
telidency of men in the United States towainis separa- 
tion had been excessive ; not in one society, but in all 
societies ; not in one body, but in all bodies ; not 
between race and race only, but between men of the 
same race ; not in the States only, but in the Churches ; 
not in politics and religion only, but in science, in 
literature, in social life. Until the War came down 
upon the nation like a judgment, rousing it from a 
trance, the moral atmosphere of America had been 
charged with the fire of secession ; almost every man 
of intellectual force and native genius in the country, 
either being or seeming to be, driven by the force of 
some inward spring from his obedience to natural 
rules and national laws. Society rights, class rights, 
property rights, — state rights, county rights, township 
rights, — land rights, mining rights, water rights, — 
church rights, chapel rights, temple rights, — personal 
rights, sexual rights — the rights of labor, of divorce, 
of profession — the rights of polygamy, of celibacy, 
of pantagamy — negro rights, Indian rights, equal 
rights, woman's rights, babies' rights : these are but 
samples of the names under which a common senti- 
ment of division had taken shape and grown into an 
actual power. "What man of mark then raised his 
voice for unity ? Who cared for the central govern- 
ment unless he could mint it into dollars, turn it into 
patronage and power ? Who taught the poor to feel 
reverence for the law? Were the rich, the learned, 



452 ^J^w ami: RIG A. 

tlic intellectual members of tins proud community 
ever seen in those clays at yonder White House? 
"What poet, what scholar, what divine, then made it 
his religion to respect a freedom which was guarded 
and controlled by the general vote ? A man of genius 
here and there took office, chiefly in some foreign city ; 
going far away from his native soil, to a place in which 
he could forget his country, while he made a tale, a 
poem, a morality, of the messages and memories of a 
foreign race and a distant age. Irving went to the 
Alhambra. Bancroft sailed for London. Rich amused 
himself in Paris. Hawthorne mused in Liverpool ; 
Motley pored over papers at the Hague. Power 
migrated to Florence, Mozier and Story pitched their 
tents in Rome. Longfellow, dallying with the Golden 
Legend, seemed to have forgotten the poetic themes 
which lay about his home. No one seemed to ap- 
preciate American scenery, no one appeared to value 
American law. For a moment everything brightest 
in the land lay under an eclipse. 

Not a few of the more brilliant men — the younger 
lights of the New England schools — renounced their 
citizen rights, and even while they yet lived in Massa- 
chusetts, in Connecticut, in Rhode Island, declared 
themselves by a public act set free from all future 
loyalty to the United States. It is said that Ripley, 
Dana, Hawthorne, Channing, Curtis, Parker, some or 
all, laid down their common rights in the American 
courts, when they undertook to raise a new society at 
Brook Farm. Boyle, Smith, and Noyes, were only 
three in a thousand clever men — born in New Eng- 
land, nurtured in its societies, educated in its schools, 
licensed to preach its gospels — who seceded from the 
Great Republic; mocking its defenders, and contemn- 
ini>: its institutions. "Ha!" roared Noyes, the idol- 



POLITICS. 453 

breaker, " do you fanc}^ that heaven is a republic, that 
a majority governs in the skies, that angelic offices are 
elective, that God is a president, that His ministers are 
responsible to a mob?" And the crowds who heard 
him, answered — No! 

In the church it was much the same as in the 
political field. That old and stately church which has 
the root of its life in the mother country, has long ago 
ceased to he the popular church of America, if numbers 
may be taken as a certain test of power ; but even 
this church of an upper class, of an aristocracy, 
rich, decorous, educated, had not been able wholly to 
escape that rage for rending and dividing which pos- 
sessed its neighbors. The preachers struck, so to 
speak, for higher wages ; when some of the laymen, 
hurt by a display of worldly motives closely akin to 
those which govern affairs in Wall Street, quitted 
their fold for that of the Bible Communist, that of 
the Shaker, that of the Universalist. 

The "Wesleyan body, numerically the largest church 
in these States, parted into two great sects — a Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church North, and a Methodist Epis- 
copal Church South ; a division which was provoked, 
not caused, by the importance just then suddenly ac- 
quired by the negro question. In the northern section 
of the Methodist church, there was a further trouble 
and a second split, on account of conscientious scru- 
ples as to bishops' powers and laymen's rights ; the 
latter point being mainly raised on the question whether 
Methodist laymen might sell rum. A new religious 
body, now of very great strength, the Wesleyan Meth- 
odist Church in the United States, grew out of this 
secession. Indeed, eight or nine sects have been formed 
out of the original church of Wesley and Whitfield, 



454 ^^W AMEBIC A. 

without counting those sececlers who have gone out 
bodily from the rest. 

j^ext in importance as to numbers come the Bap- 
tists ; a body, Hke the Methodists, fired with holy zeal ; 
which was found strong before the world, the flesh, 
the devil, yet weak in the presence of this seceding 
spirit. In a very short time this body was divided 
into Old School Baptists (called by their enemies Anti- 
effort Baptists), Sabbatarians, Campbellites, Seventh- 
day German Baptists, Tankers, Free-will Baptists, 
with their sub-section of Free Baptists ; and into some 
minor parties. 

In the Congregational Church, which prides itself 
on holding in its ranks the most highly educated min- 
isters and professors in the United States, there arose 
endless divisions, including Millennialists, Taylorites, 
and the strange heresy of the Perfectionists, founded 
by one of their students at Yale College. From the 
Millennialists, who fancied the world was about to end 
and the judgment to come, sprang the Millerites, Avho 
said it would end on a particular day. The Perfec- 
tionists, who declared that the world was already at 
an end, that the judgment had come down upon us, 
parted into Putneyites and Oberlinites ; sects which 
threw dirt upon each other, and laughed and mocked 
when any of their opposing brethren fell into sin. 

A great unrest invaded the retreat of the Moravian 
village of Bethlehem, in the pretty Lehigh mountains ; 
where young men took to questioning book and law; 
until the Moravians of Pennsylvania lost some customs 
which had hitherto marked them as a peculiar church. 

No sect escaped this rage for separation, for inde- 
pendence, for individuality; neither Unitarian, nor 
Omish, nor River Brethren, nor Winebrennarians, nor 
Swedenborgians, nor Schwenkfelders. Perhaps the 



POLITICS. 455 

Come-outers may be taken as the final fruit of this 
seceding spirit; since they separated themselves from 
the older churches, from the dead and dying churches, 
as they call them, for secession's sake, and solely in 
the hope of breaking down the religious bodies in 
which they had been reared. These Come-outers have 
two articles of faith: one social, one dogmatic; they 
believe that man and woman are equal, and that all 
the churches are dead and damned. 

Society had to go through these trials ; and she 
cannot be said to have got through her maladies with- 
out many a wound and scar; since, in the slackening 
of all ties and ligatures, men had begun to toy with 
some of her most sacred truths. Property was at- 
tacked. In the press, and in the pulpit, it was said 
that all private wealth was stolen frem the general 
fund, that no one had a right to lay up riches, that no 
man could pretend to the exclusive holding in either 
wife or child. Doctors took up their parable against 
the sanctity of marriage ; women began to doubt 
whether it was well for them to love their husbands 
and to nurse their children. Some ladies set the 
fashion of laughing at mothers ; nay, it became in 
Boston, Richmond, and New York, a sign of high 
breeding to be known as a childless wife. Wretches 
arose in every city in the land, some of them men, 
more of them women, who professed to teach young 
wives, the secret arts by which it is said, that in some 
old countries, such as France, the laws of nature have 
often been set aside. Many a great house is shown 
in New York, in which resided creatures of the night 
wdio imported into America this abominable trade. 

Religion, science, history, morality, were thrust aside 
by these reformers, as clogs on individual liberty. 
What was a canon, a commandment, to a man resolved 



456 NEW A ME RICA. 

on testing everything for himself? Excess of freedom 
led a few to Communism, a few into Free-love. What, 
in truth, is this dogma of perfect freedom, except the 
right of every man to have his own will done, even 
though his will should take the form of wishing to 
possess his neighbor's house and his neighbor's wife? 
Some of these brave reformers, like Noyes and ]SIalian, 
seized a religious feeling as the groundwork for their 
faith ; others again, like the Owenites and Fourierites, 
made a scientific axiom serve their turn; while yet a 
third and more poetic class,, the enthusiasts of Brook 
Farm, embraced a mystical middle term, making a 
god of l^ature and of Justice. All these schools of 
practical socialists seceded from the world, renouncing 
in terms, either express or tacit, their allegiance to the 
United States. 

What noble spirit, it was said, could suffer itself to 
be enslaved by canons, dogmas, precedents, and laws? 
Every man was now to be a law unto himself. Lib- 
erty was to have its day. The final stage of freedom, 
as it verges into chaos, is the stage in which no one 
has any rights left him to enjoy ; and in many parts 
of America this stage of progress had, on the evening 
of the War, been nearly reached. 

Family life was hardly less disturbed by this intrud- 
ing spirit of separation ; disputes, arising on the do- 
mestic hearth, being carried into public meetings and 
female congresses, held to debate the most fanciful 
points of diflerence between male and female, husband 
and wife, parent and child. W^omen raised their 
voices against nursing babies, against the sanctity of 
wedlock, against the permanence of marriage vows. 
They asserted rights which would have grieved and 
puzzled such models of their sex as Lad}- Rachel 
Ilussel and Lady Jane Grey. Caroline Dall demanded 



NOR TE AND SOU TH. 457 

that woman should have the right to hibov in any pro- 
fession she might care to adopt. Margaret Fuller 
taught her female readers to expect equality in the 
married state. Mary Cragin preached the doctrine of 
Free-love for woman, and practised what she preached. 
Eliza Farnham urged a revolt of woman against man, 
declaring that the female is intrinsically nobler than 
the male. 

What a glorious strength of constitution this young 
society must have had to endure with so little waste 
the shock of so many forces ! What energy, what 
solidity, what stamina in the young Saxon republic! 



CHAPTER LXIII. 

NORTH AND SOUTH. 



If the negro question lent a pretext to the rage of 
North and South, the cause of that strife in Charleston 
harbor which brought on civil war, lay closer to the 
core of things than any wish on the part of these 
Southern gentry to maintain their property in slaves. 
The negro was a sign, and little more. Even that 
broader right of a State to live by its own lights — to 
make and unmake its laws — to widen or contract its 
enterprise — to judge of its own times and seasons — 
to act either with or without its fellow States — was 
but a pretext and a cry. The causes which have whit- 
ened these Virginia battle-fields (in the midst of which 
I write) lay deeper still. A planters' war could not 
have lived a month, a seceders' war could not have 
39 



458 NUW A ME BIG A . 

lived a year. The lists were drawn in another name, 
the passions welled from a richer source. No such 
beggarly stake as either of these engaged a million of 
English brothers in mortal strife. But when did 
nations ever close in combat with the actual cause of 
war emblazoned on their shields ? Nations have a way 
of doing great things on poor grounds ; of checking 
Russia in the name of the silver key, of making Italy 
on account of one hasty word. Men are the same in 
every clime. The prize for which the South contended 
against the North, was nothing less than the Principle 
of National Life. 

What idea should lie at the root of all social habits, 
all political creeds, in this great republic ? In the con- 
stitution, itself a compromise, the make-shift of a day, 
this question had been left an open gap. Every year 
had seen that opening widen ; and sagest men had 
often said, that such a question never could be closed, 
except in the old way, by a sovereign act of sacrifice. 

On one side of a faint and failing line lay these 
Southern States, peopled for the most part by a race of 
Cavaliers ; men brave and haughty, the representatives 
of privilege, education, chivalry ; a class in whom the 
graces which come of birth, of culture, of command, 
had been developed to a high degree. On the other 
side of that line, lay yon Northern States, peopled for 
the greater part by men of Puritan descent ; shrewd 
merchants, skilful artisans, the representatives of 
genius, enterprise, equality ; a class in whom the vir- 
tues which spring from faith, ambition, and success, 
were all but universal. 

Here stood the lotus-eater, with his airs and lan- 
guors, his refinements and traditions ; there stood the 
craftsman, with his head full of ideas, his heart full of 
faith, his arm full of strength. Which was to give the 
law to this Great Republic ? 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 459 

In the South, you had a gentle class and a servile 
class. One fought and ruled ; one labored and obeyed. 
Between these two sections of the Southern people 
yawned a mighty gulf, — a separating chasm of lineage, 
form, and color ; for the higher breed was of pure old 
English blood, oftspring of men who had been the 
glories of Elizabeth's court; while the lower breed 
was of African descent, offspring of the mango plain 
and the ague swamp, children of men who had held 
the basest rank even among savages and slaves, No 
bridge could be thrown across that chasm, No touch 
of nature, it was thought, would ever be able to make 
the extremes of black and white of kin. In the eyes 
of their lords and ladies, — most of all in those of their 
ladies, — these colored tenders of the rice-field and the 
cotton-plant were not men ; they were only cattle, with 
the rights which belong to mules and cows ; the right 
to be fed and lodged in return for work, and to be 
treated mercifully — after their kind. In many of 
these States the colored people dared not learn to read 
and write ; they could not marry, and hold on truly, 
man and wife, to each other ; they had no control over 
their own children ; they could not own either pigs, 
ducks, cows, or other stock ; nor were they suffered to 
buy and sell, to hire out their labor, to use a family 
name. Against each other they had certain remedies 
for wrong ; against the white man they had none. To 
use the sadly memorable phrase of Chief Justice 
Taney, a negro had no rights which a white man w^as 
bound to respect ; in other words, he had none at all. 

It is much to say that among men so tempted to 
abuse of power, there was less w^aste of life than in any 
other slave society, even on the American soil, Vir- 
ginia was a paradise compared with Cuba and Brazil. 
Some touch of softness in the lord, some orleam of 



460 NEW AMERICA. 

piety in the mistress, had sufficed to keep the veiy 
worst planters of English blood free from the brutali- 
ties which were daily practised in .the Spanish and 
Portuguese cities farther south. Charleston was not 
a pleasant place for a negro slave ; the law was not 
with him in his need ; oftentimes he had to bear the 
bitter fruits of a tyrant's wrath. He was only too 
familiar with the lash, the chain, the blood-hound, and 
the jail ; but still, when weighed against the slave's 
condition in Havana, in Rio, in San Domingo, his life 
was that of a spoiled and petted child. The test of a 
people's happiness is the law of its reproduction. If 
a race is crushed beyond a certain point, nature pro- 
tests against the wrong in her own emphatic way. 
The race declines. Now the negro has been dying 
away in every slave society on the American soil, save 
only on that which has been ruled by men of the 
Anglo-Saxon race. Bad as our rule, and that of our 
offshoots in Virginia and the Carolinas, may have been, 
the fact is legible on every part of this continent, in 
every island of the adjacent seas, that these English 
planters, and they alone, have given the African a 
chance of life. We put, from first to last, five hun- 
dred thousand negroes on the soil of our thirteen 
colonies ; we made them toil and sweat for us ; still, 
we treated them on the whole with so much mercy, 
that they are now nine times stronger, counting them by 
heads, than the number of their imported sires. In 
Spanish America, instead of the negroes of the present 
hour being nine times stronger than their fathers, they 
scarcely count one half the original tale. This is a little 
fact — recorded in a line; but what tragedies of woe 
and death it hides ! When the great account is made 
up^ — when all that we have done, — all that we have 
left undone, — is urged against us, may we not plead 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 461 

this increase of the negro under our dominion as some 
small set-off to our many sins? 

A tourist from the Old World — one of the idler 
classes — found himself much at home in tliese coun- 
try mansions. The houses were well planned and built ; 
tlie furniture was rich ; the table and the wine were 
good ; the books, the prints, the music, were such as 
he had known in Europe. He found plenty of horses 
and servants; spacious grounds, fine woods, abundant 
game. In one place he got a little hunting; in a 
second place a little fishing. ISTearly all the young 
ladies rode well, danced well, sang well. The men 
were frank, audacious, hospitable. W hat was unsightly 
in the place was either far away from a stranger's eyes, 
or made to look comical and picturesque. He heard 
of slavery as a jest, and went down to the plantation 
to see a play. Sam was called up before him to grin 
and yelp. A dance being on, and the can of punch 
going round as the negroes hopped and sang, he would 
go home from the scene merrily confused, and with 
an idea that the darkey rather loved his chains. In 
Missouri and Virginia I have seen enough to know 
how easily tourists may be deceived by the lightness 
and laughter of a negro crowd. A colored man is 
plastic, loving, docile ; for a kindly word, for a drink 
of whisky, for a moment's frolic, he will sing and 
dance. He is very patient, very slow. In Omaha I 
found a rowdy beating a black lad in the street and 
inquired the cause: — "me say nig;ger have right to 
vote," said the lad; "disgel'man say nigger ain't folks 
nohow." The lad made no complaint of being beaten : 
indeed, he laughed as though he liked it. If the white 
man ha.d been his master, he, too, would have smiled, 
and I should possibly have thought it a pretty jest. 
The South was made pleasant to its English guest; 
3<) * 



4C2 NEW AMEBIC A. 

for the people felt that the English were of nearer kin 
to them than their Yankee brethren. A sunny sky, 
a smiling hostess, an idle life, and a luxurious couch, 
led him softly to forget the foundations on which that 
seducing fabric stood. 

In the Northern States such a lotus-eater would 
have found but little to his taste. The country- 
houses — except in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, 
where the fine old English style is still in vogue — 
were not so spacious and so splendid as in the South ; 
the climate was much colder; and the delights of 
lounging were much less. He had nothing to do, and 
nobod}' had time to help him. The men being all 
intent on their aiiairs, they neither hunted, fished, nor 
danced ; they talked of scarcely anything but their 
mills, their mines, their roads, their fisheries ; they 
were always eager, hurried, and absorbed, as though 
the universe hung upon their arms, and they feared to 
let it fall. The women, too, were busy with a care 
and trouble of their own. JSTo idle mornings in the 
library, in the green-house, on the lawn, could be got 
from these busy creatures, who were gone from the 
breakfiist-table to the school-room, to the writing-desk, 
to the sewing-frame, long befpre the guest had played 
out his fund of compliments and jokes. It was true 
that when they could be got to talk about science, 
politics, and letters, he found them read to the highest 
point — full of the last fact, the last movement, the 
last book ; bright and knowing people, who let nothing 
pass them, and with the habit of turning their acquire- 
ments to instant use ; sometimes making him do ser- 
vice in an unexpected way. But he, an idler in the 
land, had no enjoyment in their rapid talk. They 
thought of him little, of their own projects much. 
When he wanted only to loll and dream, his host had 



NORTH AND SOUTH. 4G3 

to meet a banker in the city, his hostess had to teach 
a class in the vilkige-schooL He must amuse himself, 
he was always being told, until the afternoon. There 
was the coal-mine to see, the new bridge to inspect, 
the steam-harrow to test. What did he care about 
coal, and bridge, and harrow! He would smoke a 
cigarette, and take the very next train for Richmond. 
In these sumiy Southern houses, with their long 
verandas, their pleasant lawns, no man was busy, no 
woman was in haste. Every one had time for wit, for 
compliment, for small talk. The day went by in gos- 
sip. No man there ever thought of working, for to 
work was the slave's office. Work was ignoble in 
these cities. Society had said, " Thou shalt not labor, 
and escape the curse;" and white men would not put 
their hands to the plough. " Work ! " said a stout young 
fellow in Tennessee to a man from whom he was ask- 
ing alms, " thank God, I have never done a stroke of 
work since I was born; I am not going to change; 
you may hang me if you like, but you shall never 
make me work." In these sad words spoke the spirit 
of the South. "In one thing we were wrong," said 
to me a Georgian gentleman; " our pride would not 
let US teach. We had scarcely any professors in the 
South. Our people were well trained and grounded ; 
we had some good scholars and more good speakers ; 
but we had to send into our enemies' schools, to Cam- 
bridge and New Haven, for our teachers, whether 
male or female ; and they almost taught our children 
to be Yankees." Teaching was work, and a Georgian 
could neither work nor recognize the dignity of work. 
In one of those passionate storms which sometimes 
swept across these languid cities, the evils of this bor- 
rowed life being clear, it was proposed to found a 
great University in the South, and to invite, l)y liberal 



464 NEW AMEBIC A. 

chairs, the most eminent men of literature and science 
from Europe, and also from the North ; among them, 
Prof Agassiz, who was to have been installed their 
chief. "And how about our social standing?" asked 
the great professor, from whom I heard these details. 
There came the rub. The social standing of a teacher 
in the South ! A teacher could not hope to hold any 
standing in the slave society, and thereupon the pro- 
posal to invite the best men to come over from Oxford 
and Berlin, as well as from Boston and I^ew Haven, 
tumbled to the ground. 

In the ]!^orthern cities you had neither a gentle class 
nor a servile class. In their stead you had men of 
learning, business, enterprise ; men of as pure and 
lofty lineage as the Southern chivalry, with fresher 
notions, hardier habits, and a larger faith. The Mid- 
dle Ages and the Modern Ages could not come to- 
gether and live in peace ; each would be master in 
the Great Republic, — on the one side Chivalry, with 
its glories and its vices ; on the other side. Equality, 
with its ardor and its hopes. 

Which of these two principles — Privilege, Equal- 
ity — was to govern this Great Republic? 



COLOR. 465 



CHAPTER LXIV. 

COLOR. 

One chance the white man had, and still might 
have — of living here, in Virginia, also down in Ala- 
bama, Mississippi, and the Carolinas, a social and 
political life apart from his English brother in Penn- 
sylvania, Massachusetts, and Ohio ; but the course to 
be taken by him is one from which it is commonly 
believed that his pride must revolt, and his taste re- 
coil, — a family alliance with the negro race. 

Long before the ugly word miscegenation came into 
use, and young damsels in ringlets and chignons stood 
up in public pleading for a mixture of breeds, many 
sincere, and some serious, men had proached the 
dogma of a saving quality in the negro blood. Chan- 
ning had prepared the way for Anna Dickenson. In 
their flowery prose, the New England teachers had 
bestowed upon their negro client in the South an 
emotional nature far above anything that his poor 
white brother in the North could boast. On the hard 
and selfish side of his intellect, a white man might be 
cursed with keener power ; the point was moot ; but 
in all that concerned his moral nature, — the religious 
instincts, the family afiections, the social graces, — the 
negro was declared to be a softer, sweeter, and supe- 
rior being. He was far more sensitive to signs and 
dreams, to the voice of birds, to the cries of children, 
to the heat of noon, to the calm of night. He had a 
finer ear for song, a quicker relish for the dance. He 
loved color with a wiser love. He had a deeper 
yearning after places ; a fresher delight in worship ; a 



466 NEW AMERICA. 

livelier sense of the Fatherhood of God. These fancy 
pictures of the negro — drawn in a New England 
study, a thousand miles from a rice-field and a cotton 
plantation — culminated in Uncle Tom. 

Many good people in the l^ortli had begun to think 
it would be well for these pale and bilious shadows 
of the South, to marry their sons and daughters to 
such highly-gifted and emotional creatures, with a 
view to restoring the strength and thickening the 
fibre of their race. When the "War broke out, this 
feeling spread ; as it raged and stormed, this feeling 
deepened : and now, when the War is over, and the 
South lies prostrate, there is a party in New England, 
counting women in its ranks, who would be glad, if 
they could find a way, to marry the whole white popu- 
lation, living south of Richmond, to the blacks. Again 
and again I have heard men, grave of face and clean 
of life, declare in public, and to sympathizing hearers, 
that a marriage of white and black would improve the 
paler stock. In every case these marriages were to 
happen a long way off. I have met more than one 
lady who did not shrink from saying that, in her be- 
lief, it would be a great improvement for some of the 
fair damsels of Charleston and of Savannah to wed 
black husbands. I never met a lady who said it would 
be well for her own girls to do so. 

The War has wrought a change in favor of the 
negro, who is now a petted mortal in the North, to be 
mentioned as "the colored gentleman," not as "the 
damned black rascal " of former times. He rides in 
the street-cars; he has a right to sit by his white 
brother in a railway ; he may enter the same church, 
and pray in the adjoining pew. Public men make 
speeches for him, female lecturers expound him. I 
have heard Captain Anthony, a New England orator. 



COLOR. 467 

declare that if he wanted to find a good heart in the 
Southern States, he should look for it under a sable 
skin ; if he wanted to find a good head, he should look 
for it under woolly hair. That strange thing was said 
in Kansas, in one of the cleverest speeches I have ever 
heard. 

The fact is, the negro is here the coming man. 
Parties being nicely poised, the dark men being 
likely to get votes, they are even now, in view of that 
heirship, courted, "flattered, and cajoled. During the 
War the negro proved himself a man : — the black and 
brown lads who rushed into yon fort (now held by 
Harry Pierman and his imps) made all their fellows 
men forever. 

Six years ago, as I am told, no lady in Boston, in 
JS'ew York, in Philadelphia, could bear to have a 
negro servant near her: a black man drank and stank; 
he was a cheat, a liar, a sot, a thief. I do not find 
this feeling wholly gone: here and there it may linger 
for many years ; but it is greatly changed ; and I have 
heard very dainty ladies in Boston and ISTew York, 
express a liking for the negro as a household help. 
He is neat and willing ; quick with his hand ; good- 
humored, grateful. Some of his race are handsome, 
with the grace and style which are held the signs of 
blood. Here, in Eichmond, and at all hotels from 
IS'ew York to Denver, negroes serve at table, shave 
and dress you, clean your boots, and wait upon your 
person. In the many hundreds who have been about 
me, I have never heard one saucy word, never seen 
one sulky scowl. 

One of the negroes whom we saw in Leavenworth 
was asked whether he would marry and settle, seeing 
that he had saved a good deal of money. " N'o, sar ; 
me not marry : no white lady have me, and me not 



468 NEW AMERICA. 

have white woman who marry me for money." On 
being asked why he could not court and win a woman 
from his own people, he exclaimed, "Lord, sar! you 
not think I marry a black nigger wench ? " Yet the 
fellow was a full-blooded negro, black as a piece of 
coal. 

That the negro is fitted, by his humor, by his indus- 
try, by his sociality, for a very high form of civil life, 
may be safely assumed. Some negroes are rich and 
learned, practise at the bar, preach from the pulpit, 
strut upon the stage. Many have a great desire to 
learn and to get on. Here is Eli Brown, head waiter 
in the Richmond hotel; a man with a bright eye, a 
sharp tongue, a quick hand. A few months since he 
was a slave. He learned to read in secret, and in 
daily fear of the lash ; since he got his freedom, he 
has learned to write. In this black lad, I have found 
more sense of right and wrong, of policy and justice, 
than in half the platform orators of the schools. "Tell 
me, Eli, do you want a vote?" I said to him in the 
after-dinner chat, as he stood behind my chair. "JSTot 
now, sir," he replied; "I have not read enough yet, 
and do not understand it all. Sometime I would like 
to vote, like the others ; in twenty or twenty-five 
years." Is not a man with so much sense fitter for 
the franchise than a pot-house yelper, who does not 
know how much he has still to learn ? 

Last night, I went with Eli round this city ; not to 
see its stores and bars, its singing-rooms and hells; 
but bent on a series of peeps into the negro schools. 
They are mostly up in garrets or down in vaults ; poor 
rooms, with scant supplies of benches, desks, and 
books. In some, the teacher is a white ; in many he 
is either a black or half-caste. Old men, young lads, 
were equally intent on learning in these humble 



COLOR. 469 

schools ; fellows of sixty pottering with the pen, and 
iiat-nosed little urchins tugging at their ABC. All 
were working with a will; bent on conquering the 
first great obstacles to knowledge. These men are 
not waiting for the world to come and cheer them 
with its grand endowments and its national schools; 
they have begun the work of emancipating themselves 
from the thraldom of ignorance and vice. In Eich- 
mond only there are forty of these negro schools. 

In the fronl of men inspired by such a spirit, the 
planters cannot afford to lie still and rust in their 
ancient pride. Knowledge is power, and the weaker 
man always goes to the wall. But though the planter 
may, and must, prepare himself to compete with a 
new class on his own estate, does it follow that he 
must mix his blood with that of his former slave? 

The feeling of aversion to the negro as an associate, 
even for a passing moment in a room, a church, a rail- 
way carriage, though it may be softening, as the negro 
grows in freedom, wealth, and culture, is very strong ; 
not only here, in Richmond, where the negro was a 
chattel, to be bought and sold, starved, beaten, spat 
on, by his lordly brother, but in the West and North, 
in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Chicago, far away 
from the sights and sounds of a servile class. Since 
the War was closed, a negro has a legal right to enter 
any public vehicle plying in the streets for hire ; but, 
in many cases, he dares not exercise his right. A 
cabman would not drive him ; a conductor would not 
let him step into a ladies' car. In passing through 
Ohio, a State in which the colored folks are numerous, 
being struck by the absence of all dark faces from the 
cars, I went forward to the front of our train, and there, 
between the tender and the luggage van, found a 
separate pen, filthy beyond words to suggest, in which 
40 



470 NEW AMEBIC A. 

were a dozen free negroes, going the same road and 
paying the same fare as myself^ " Why do these ne- 
groes ride apart — why not travel in the common 
cars?" I asked the guard', "Well," said he, with a 
sudden lightning in his eyes, "they have the right; 
but, damn them, I should like to see them do it. 
Ugh!" The ugly shudder of the guard recalled a 
black expression of Big Elk, one of my Cheyenne 
comforters on the Plains. Here, in Virginia, all the 
railway companies have posted orders to the effect 
that, when a negro has paid his fare, he may ride in 
any car he pleases, subject to the common rules; but, 
gracious heavens ! what negro dares to put his feet on 
the white man's steps? Sam likes 'his free condition : 
at times, he may air his liberty offensively under his 
former master's nose ; but he also loves his skin ; and 
in a land where every man carries a revolver, lingering 
it as freely as in England we should sport with a cigar- 
case, Sam knows how far he may go, and where he 
must stop. Habits are not changed by a paper law ; 
and the day of a perfectly free and friendly intercourse 
between whites and blacks is yet a long way off. 

In Massachusetts and Rhode Island, you will hear 
it said, in favor of miscegenation, that this scheme for 
blending races and mixing blood is no new method ; 
but one which had long prevailed in Virginia, Caro- 
lina, and Alabama. Your teachers tell you that mis- 
cegenation is a fact, not a theory, a Southern habit, not 
a Northern project. They take you into the streets, 
hotels, and barbers' shops ; they bid you look at these 
yellow negroes, some pale as Moors, some white as 
Spaniards ; and they ask you to tell them whence come 
these Saxon features, these blue gray eyes, these deli- 
cate hands ? They show you a negress with golden 
hair. Do such things prove that the white blood will 



COLOR. 471 

not mingle with the black? Sail to Newport, ride to 
Saratoga. These idling places swarm with colored 
servants; every man, every woman of whom might he 
put in evidence of the truth. What is seen in New- 
port, in Saratoga, is also seen at Niagara, at Long 
Branch, at Lebanon Springs, at every watering-place 
in this Republic. North of the Potomac, it is a rare 
thing to find a pure African black. Many of your 
house-servants are half-castes, more still are quadroons 
and octoroons. Broad traces of either English or 
Spanish blood may be seen in nearly all ; in the color, 
in the carriage, in the contour, in the style. This pale 
wdiite negro, Pete, has the air of a grandee. Eli, my 
friend here, has the bearing of a judge. Who knows 
where Pete, where Eli, got that lofty air? Li Virginia, 
in Carolina, the black squat face, with its huge lips, its 
low forehead, its open nostrils, is seen in every street. 
It is not a comely face to look on : though the folks 
who wear this form and hue are not such brutes as 
they are sometimes called. Many of them are bright 
and thriving ; Harry Pierman is a fullblooded negro. 
But even in Richmond these colored people have a 
large admixture of Saxon blood. Eli Brown is a half- 
caste ; so is Pete ; most of these clever lads, our ser- 
vants, are quadroons. It is certain, therefore, as the 
New England teachers say, that miscegenation, instead 
of being a new thing in the South, has been known 
and practised for many years. 

Thus far, however, it has been practised only on one 
side, — on the male side ; and the new plan for mixing 
the blood of white and black appears to be only a 
branch of that mighty theory of reform, now agitating 
and unsettling all society — the theory of equal rights 
for sex and sex. Hitherto, miscegenation has been 
open to men, denied to women. Male Saxon life has 



472 NEW AMERICA. 

long been passing into negro veins ; and that shrewd 
observer, Captain Anthony, who said he should look 
for a good heart under a sable skin, a good head under 
woolly hair, gave this strange reason for his faith in 
negro courage and negro talent — that the best blood 
of Virginia and Carolina flows in the veins of this col- 
ored race. For ten generations, he asserts, the youth 
of this English gentry has been given up to negro para- 
mours ; nearly all that time the breeding of slaves for 
the market has been a trade in these Southern parts. 
No sense of shame, he says, either prevented a father 
from giving his heir a pretty quadroon for a playmate, 
or from afterwards selling the fruits of their illicit love. 
When, according to Captain Anthony, his youth was 
spent, his heart Avas sear, and his brain was dull, this 
heir of a gentle house was married to a white woman, 
who bore him children and preserved his name. Is it 
not clear, asked the speaker, that the strength and 
freshness of that gentle family should be sought for in 
negro ranks ? 

Why, the reformer then comes in and asks, if such 
things can be allowed on one side, why not on the 
other ? If it be right for a man to love a negro mis- 
tress, why should it De wrong for a woman to wed a 
negro husband ? Thus it would appear from a review 
of facts and sentiments, that this sudden and alarming 
theory of miscegenation is no more than an effort to 
make free for all that which is now only free for some ; 
an effort to give legal standing, moral sanction, to what 
is already a habit of the stronger sex. 

But among this stronger sex, with the rare exception 
of a poet here, a philosopher there, this idea of intro- 
ducing a fashion of love and wedlock among white 
women and black men excites the wildest rage. Gen- 
tlemen sitting at table, sipping soup, picking terapin. 



COLOR. 473 

will clench tlieir hands and gnaw their lips at any allu- 
sion to the subject. Americans are not squeamish as 
to jokes ; but you must not jest in their society about 
the loves of black men for white women. Merely for 
paying a compliment where it is thought he should 
not, a negro would be ilogged and tarred and hung. 
No punishment would be deemed brutal and fierce 
enough for such a sinner. A friend who knew what 
he was saying, told me in the western countr}^ that he 
had seen a negro seized by a mob for having insulted 
a white girl; his oft'ence was that of giving the girl a 
kiss, with an appearance of aiming at a further free- 
dom ; and on the girl screaming for assistance, he was 
collared by a soldier, a native of Ohio, and dragged 
into Fort Halleck, where he was cuffed and kicked, 
tarred and feathered, set on fire, skinned alive, and 
finally stuck, half-dead, in a firkin, and exposed on 
the open Plains, until his flesh was eaten away by 
wolves and hawks. 

My friend, who told me this story, a Missourian by 
birth, a soldier in the War, had no conception that I 
should be shocked by such details, that I should con- 
sider the punishment in excess of the offence, that I 
shouldthink the Oliio soldier guilty of a grievous crime. 
In the Western country life is lightly held and lightly 
taken. No one puts the high value on a drop of blood 
which we of the elder country set upon it. A white 
man counts for little — less than for a horse ; a black 
man counts for nothing — less than for a dog. All 
this I knew ; and therefore I could understand my 
friend. 

A time may perhaps come, as poets feign and 
preachers prophesy, when the negro man and the 
Saxon woman will be husband and wife ; but the day 
when they can go to church together, for the celebra- 



474 NEW AMEBIC A. 

tion of their marriage rites, without exciting the 
wrath, provoking the revenge, of these masculine 
protectors of white women, is evidently a long way 
off. 



CHAPTER LXV. 

RECONSTRUCTION. 

In the great contest now going forward in every 
part of this Republic as to the safest theory of recon- 
struction, — that is to say, as to the principle and plan 
on which the New America may be built up — every 
party seems to have put the Union in its front. Un- 
der the dome of yon glorious New Capitol, men from 
the North and from the South appeared to be equally 
eloquent and ardent for the flag. All speakers have 
the word upon their lips, all writers have the symbol 
in their style. Unity would seem to be, not only the 
political religion of men in oflice, but the inspiration 
of every man who desires to serve his country. No 
other cry has a chance of being heard. Not to join 
in this popular demand is to be guilty of a grave 
offence. "We are all for the Union," said to me a 
Virginian lady not an hour ago, "the Union as it was, 
if we may have it so; our sole desire is to stand where 
we stood in '61." So far as you can hear in Rich- 
mond, this expression would appear to convey the 
general wish. North of the Potomac, too, the desire 
to have done with the past five years of trouble and 
dissension is universal. 

In the new elections, evcrv candidate for oflice has 



EECONSTBUO TION. 475 

been forced by the public passion, though often 
against his will, to adopt this watch-cry of the nation 
for himself and for his friends ; while he has found 
his profit in denouncing his enemies and their parti- 
sans as disunionists, — a denunciation which, in the 
present temper of men, is taken to imply all the worst 
treacheries and corruptions, present and to come ; in 
fact, to clothe a man with such uncleanness of mind 
and body as lay in the Hebrew phrase of a whited-wall. 
Union is a word of grace, of sweetness, and of charm. 
Everybody takes it to himself, everybody claims it for 
his section. Disunion, a word so musical in Rich- 
mond, Ealeigh, New Orleans, not thirty months ago, 
is now a ban, a stigma, a reproach. Its day is past. 
Republicans call their Democratic rivals disunionists ; 
Democrats describe their Republican adversaries as 
disunionists. Each section writes the word Union on 
its ticket, and the shout of this common word from 
the opposite camps is apt to confuse a free and inde- 
pendent elector when he comes to vote. 

Even here, in Richmond, the capital of a proud and 
fallen cause, in which the streets are yet black with 
fire, around which the fields are yet sick with blood, 
there is scarcely any other cry among the wise, the 
moderate, and the hopeful. A few, unquestionably, 
cling with a passionate warmth to the memory of the 
past; but every day, as it goes by, is thinning the 
ranks of these sentimental martyrs. The young, who 
feel that their life is before them, not behind, are all 
coming round to a larger and more practical view of 
tacts. They see that the battle has been fought, that 
the prize for which they struggled has been lost. 
Slavery is gone. State rights are gone. The dream 
of independence is gone. Men who are hopelessly 
compromised by events — who feel that the victorious 



476 ^^^W AMERICA. 

States can never again intrust them with political 
power — may urge on their fellows the merit and the 
virtue of despair; but the younger men of this nation 
feel that sullenness and silence will not help them to 
undo the victories of Sherman, Sheridan, and Grant. 
Excepting in the society of women — a class of gener-^ 
ous and noble, but illogical and impracticable reason- 
ers — not many persons in the South (I am told) re- 
gard the prospect of reunion with a free and powerful 
republic, just awakening, at their instance, to a con- 
sciousness of its colassal might, with any other feeling 
than a proud and eager joy. 

Richmond is not, just now, in a mood of much 
emotion ; since she fell into Northern hands her habit 
has been that of a proud and cold reserve; yet so soon 
as the pending elections roused in her a little life, her 
enthusiasm, such as it was, ran wholly in the form of 
the ancient flag. At a dinner party given in this city 
the other day, a politician proposed as a toast, " The 
fallen flag." " Hush, gentlemen ! " said a son of Gen- 
eral Lee, " this sort of thing is past. We have no 
flag now but the glorious Stars and Stripes, and I 
will neither fight, nor drink, for any other." 

From the tone and temper of such political debate 
as one hears in Richmond, I see no reason to suspect 
(with some of the New York papers) that this patriot- 
ism of Virginia is the result of either fear or craft ; 
for in my poor judgment, no disaster, however dark, 
no privation, however keen, could have driven these 
proud Virginian gentry into pleading for a renewal 
of friendly relations on other than the usual grounds 
of political science. The return to wiser feelings on 
the part of these vanquished soldiers seems to have 
been the natural consequence of events. The life 
before them is a new life. Slaverv is s^one, and the 



RECONSTRUCTION. 477 

hatreds provoked by slavery are going. Men have to 
look their fortunes in the face, and it is well that they 
should do it without suffering their judgment to be 
warped by the disturbing passions so commonly found 
on a losing side. How are the planters to maintain 
their place — not in the Great Republic only, but in 
Carolina and Virginia ? At present they are an- aris- 
tocracy without a servile class. They have great 
estates; but they have no capital, no mills, no ships, 
no laborers. They are burdened with enormous 
debts. They have scarcely any direct and indepen- 
dent intercourse with foreign nations. Worse than 
all, they are surrounded, in their fields and in their 
houses, by a population of inferior race. Does it 
need any more than a little good sense to perceive 
that the English gentry in the South may find their 
Dest account in a partnership with the English citizens 
of the North, even though these latter should impose 
on the repentant prodigals a forgiving kinsman's 
terms ? 

The blacks are strong in numbers, clanish in spirit ; 
they are fond of money, and have the virtue to earn 
and save. Can you prevent the negroes from growing 
rich, from educating their children at good schools, 
from aspiring to otlices of trust and power? They 
will rise both individually and in classes. The day is 
not far distant when, in States like Alabama and South 
Carolina, the race may be swift and hard between the 
black planter and the white. When that day comes, 
will it not be well for the white man to have gained 
for himself some support in the power and enterprise 
of his brother in the ITorth ? 

In these semi-tropical parts of the Republic a white 
man faints where the black man thrives. Nature has, 
therefore, put the white planter at a disadvantage on 



478 NEW AMEBIC A. 

this Soutliern soil. For a dozen years to come, per- 
haps more, the negroes, who were only yesterday in 
chains and poverty, may be sorely tried ; for they are 
rooted to the soil ; they have neither trades nor call- 
ings ; they are ignorant of letters ; they have very 
little money ; scarcely any of them have friends. Be- 
fore them stands a world in which they are free to 
labor and free to starve. At first, they must be ser- 
vants in the families, toilers on the plantations, in 
which they have recently been slaves; yet in some 
cases the negro has already become a planter on his 
own account, having gained, in a few months, a supply 
of tools and a lease of lands. 

Take the example of my friend Henry Pierman, a 
negro, who has planted himself out yonder in Har- 
rison's Fort, in a log-cabin, amidst the reek and stench 
of the great battle-fields. As no white man would 
rent such land, the lady who owns it, poorer and less 
proud than she was in former years, has been glad to 
let a great patch of forest to Henry. The log-hut has 
but a single room, and in this one room he lives with 
his black and comely wife, his four young imps, and 
a brood of cocks and hens. Harry was a slave until 
Grant tore his way through these formidable lines, 
when he became free by the great act of war which 
made all his people free. Happily for him, he had 
been a domestic slave in one of those rich Virginian 
households in which nobody cared about the laws. 
One of the young ladies, more for fun than with serious 
thought, had defied the police and the magistrate by 
teaching him to read. Her father being the Governor 
of Virginia, she snapped her pretty fingers at the 
judge. Harry read the Bible, and became a member 
of the Baptist church. Like all his brethren, he is 
keenly alive to religious passion, subject to dreams 



RE C ONS TR UC TION. 479 

and voices, one of which had told him, he asserts, 
while he was yet a youth and a slave, that he would 
one day become a free man, would marry, would have 
children, and would rent a farm of his own. Many 
years went by before his dream came out, but he 
prayed and waited; in the end he found that this 
promise of his youth was kept. So soon as the liber- 
ating armies entered Richmond he left his old place, 
though his master had been kind to him, and wished 
to keep him as a servant on hire ; but the passion to 
be free was in his veins ; voices called him from the 
city into the fields; and, without money, ploughs, 
scythes, seed, horses, stock of any kind, with only his 
black wife to help him, and his three youngsters to feed, 
he threw himself on the forest land. Last year, his 
trial-year, was found to be bitter work, but he had 
put his soul into his task, and he got on. Up early 
and late, pinching his back and his belly, he was able 
to send a few onions and tomatoes, a little corn and 
wood, to market. This produce bought him tools, 
and paid his rent in kind. By patience he got through 
the winter months, In the second year his enterprises 
have extended to a hundred and forty acres, and he 
has now the help of two other negroes, one of them 
his wife's father, whom he has lodged in another of 
these soldiers' huts. One-fourth of his produce pays 
the rent ; the remaining three-fourths he divides into 
two equal portions, one of which he gives to his negro 
helpers, the other he retains for himself and wife. 
Henry is clever, pushing, devout ; for his children, if 
not for himself, he is ambitious. One of his two lads 
is shortly to begin his school-work ; at present he must 
toil upon the farm. "I heard dc angel say in my 
dream," he said to me with simple faith, " dat I bring 
up my children in de fear of de Lord ; and how man 



480 NjEW amebic a. 

bring clem up in fear of de Lord, unless he teach dem 
to read and write?" 

The field of enterprise for working-men like Henry 
Pierman is extremely wide. Two-thirds of the soil 
of Virginia are still uncleared ; indeed this old and 
lovely State is everywhere rich in mines, in water- 
ways, in wood and coal, which a splendid and careless 
people have left to wait and rot. Each year will see 
the band of negro farmers grow on these Virginian 
waste lands ; and when the colored people have grown 
rich and educated, how can they be kept from social 
and political power ? In some States of the South, 
they are many: in one State, South Carolina, they 
count more than half the population ; so that South 
Carolina, standing by itself and governed by universal 
suffrage, w^ould vote itself a negro legislature, perhaps 
a negro governor. These dark people are growing 
faster than the pale. In time they will own ships and 
mines, banks and granaries; and when they have 
gathered up money and votes, how will the white man 
be able to hold his easy and safe supremacy in these 
semi-tropical States unless by union with his white 
brethren in the North ? 

Of course, while every hope and every fear may be 
thus impelling Korth and South to reunite, each sec- 
tion may still desire to construct the E'ew America on 
terms best suited to itself. Deprived by the war of 
their slaves, laden with debts, both personal and ter- 
ritorial, the Southern planters would like to rejoin the 
ancient league as equals, if it may be, as more than 
equals. Under the old Constitution they were more 
than equals, since they voted for themselves and for 
their slaves ; and what they were aforetime they would 
like to be again. 

But Northern statesmen, flushed with their recent 



RE CONS TR U C TIO N. 481 

glories, have no mind to put back the sword into its 
sheath, until they shall have fully secured the objects 
for which they fought; one of which objects is, to 
prevent, in future, a Charleston planter from exer- 
cising in the national councils a larger share of power 
than falls to the lot of a manufacturer of Boston, a 
banker of New York. Such larger share of power 
the Constitution had given to the Charleston planter, 
on account of his holding property in slaves ; repre- 
sentation in the Capitol being based on population; 
five negroes counting for three free men ; and the 
masters voting, not for themselves only, but for their 
slaves. The strife of policy rages for the moment 
wholly around this point. 

The two moderate parties, between w^hicli the strug- 
gle of the coming years will mainly lie, are the Re- 
publican and the Democrat. The Republicans, strong 
in the North, are weak in the South ; the Democrats, 
strong in the South, are weak at the North ; but each 
party has its organization and its follow^ers in every 
State of the Republic. They have other points of 
diiference ; but the chief contention now dividing 
them, is as to what guaranties shall be demanded 
from the rebellious States before they come into Con- 
gress and take their chances in the fight for power. 

The Republicans say, that all white men in the 
Union, that is to say, all the voters, should be made 
equal to each other before the ballot-box; that each 
man should poll once and for himself only, with no 
distinction of North or South. The black man they 
leave out of their account; he is to them as a minor, 
a woman ; having no rights at the poll and in the 
legislature. This change in the law of voting cannot 
be made and put into force until the Constitution shall 
have been first amended. That charter based the 
41 



482 NEW AMERICA. 

power of representation on population, without regard 
to the number of voters. The negroes counted as 
people, and their masters got the political profit of 
their presence on the soih In the Old America, the 
planters who exercised this power may have fairly 
represented the negro mind, so far as negroes had 
opinions and emotions ; but this Old America is gone 
for ever; the planter can no longer answer for his 
slave ; and his claim by the old law to give this vote 
on the black man's behalf, must be done away. In 
future, all white men in the United States must have 
an equal power at the poll ; hence, the Kepublicans 
have framed a bill, amending the Constitution so far 
as to base the representation in Congress not on the 
number of persons, but on the number of voters. A 
majority in the new Congress is certain to be of 
opinion that this bill should pass. 

The Democrats assert that any amendment of the 
^Constitution is illegal, revolutionary, needless. They 
say, and in theory they rightly say, that representation 
should be based on population ; on a great natural 
fact, easily ascertained, capable of proof; not on a 
whimsy, a convenience of the day, a mere local act, 
which may be passed to-day, re-called to-morrow. 
They clench the doctrine which the moderate section 
among Republicans profess to have adopted, that a 
black man, in his pres'ent state of ignorance, is not fit 
to vote; but then they add, that as the black man 
shall not vote himself, his more liberal and enlightened 
neighbor, like the electoral classes in a European 
state, should be allowed to cast his vote into the urn. 
These Democrats have the g-reat advautas^e of seeming 

O Ci rt 

to stand by the law and Constitution, but their reason- 
ing against the constitutional bill is seen to be futile 
and unsound. President Johnson and his cabinet are 



RE CONS TR UCTION. 483 

of opinion that this Constitutional Amendment should 
not pass. 

Each party finds a certain amount of sympathy in 
the hostile camp. The Northern Radicals object to 
the Constitutional Amendment as illegal and unneces- 
sary ; asserting, with the Democrats, that representa- 
tion should be based on natural population, not on the 
number of legal voters; asserting, with the Republi- 
cans, that all white men should have equal rights in 
the urn ; and declaring, in the face of both these 
parties, that the negro should be allowed to give his 
vote for himself. In like manner, the Southern 
moderates, while they hold to many doctrines which 
the North will not indorse, are not unwilling to unite 
with them on the terms of equal rights proposed by 
the Republicans. This party of peace and compromise 
is perhaps the strongest, numerically, in the South ; 
but the hopes of more fanatical men have been so 
hotly fanned by President Johnson and his agents, 
that calm and reasonable counsels have been heard 
among the old governing classes with a certain stiff- 
ness and impatience. 

We need not judge these parties with heat and 
haste. After her losses in the field, the South may 
easily persuade herself that she has a right to ask for 
much, and to take whatever advantages she can of the 
divided counsels of her foes. 



48^4 ^'^ ^ AMERICA . 



CHAPTER LXVI. 

UNION. 

The main obstacle, then, to a Union, such as late 
events have made possible, and the interests of all 
parties would suggest, is not the temper of either 
North or South, but the existence of a paper-law, for 
which every American has been trained to express a 
veneration almost equal to that which he professes for 
the Word of God. 

If any human effort of the pen is sacred in the eyes 
of these people, it is their Constitution. Indeed, a 
stranger in the land can hardly comprehend the rever- 
ence — sometimes rising into awe — with which brave 
Virginians, practical Pennsylvanians, bright New 
Englanders, always speak of their Organic law. Apart 
from the affection borne to it by a great people, that 
organic law, from whatever point of view it is re- 
garded, fails to impress a student of politics as being 
the highest effort of human genius. It is less than a 
hundred years old, and has none of the halo which 
comes of time. It was not a growth of the soil and 
of the English mind, but an exotic, drawn from the 
foreign and artificial atmosphere of France. On the 
day of its adoption it was no more than a compromise, 
and ever since that day it has stood in the way of 
progress in the United States. The principles em- 
bodied in it are in direct antagonism to that splendid 
document, which often lies by its side in the text- 
books — the Declaration of Independence; for the 
Constitution denies that all men are free and equal, 



umo^'. 485 

and refuses to large classes of the people the pursuit 
of their own happiness. 

"Who can forget how often, and with what success, 
tliat Constitution has been cited in evidence that the 
negro slave was not considered by the founders of this 
Ixcpublic, as a human being? If all men are pro- 
nounced free and equal, by the fact of their birth, it is 
only too obvious that creatures held in bondage are 
not men. But everyone knows -that the Declaration 
of Independence set forth the true and final views of 
those founders, while the Constitution expressed no 
more than the political compromises of a day. The 
very men who signed it wished it to be amended ; in 
the first convulsion which has tried the political fabric 
of this country, it is found to be the cause of a thou- 
sand disasters. It has brought the country to such a 
stand that years may possibly elapse before the facts 
which have been accomplished, and which cannot be 
reversed, can be set in harmonious relation to the 
paper-laws. 

While Americans are busy, unmaking and amending 
their Constitution, may they not fairly put to them- 
selves the question. What is the use of this record? 
At best, when the letter of a constitution is true in 
every detail — true to the designs of God in His moral 
government of men, true to the life and hope of the 
people in whose name it is drawn up — it is only a 
definition of facts. It is a thing of the past; a record 
of what the people have been, and of what they are. 
But the act of defining is also one of narrowing, 
limiting, restricting. Why should the life of a great 
continent bo narrowed down to a phrase ? How can 
a progressive country pretend to limit its power of 
future growth ? By what right may a free common- 
wealth presume to restrain ihe march of ideas and 
41 * 



486 -V^"' AM £ RICA. 

events ? In a despotic state, where men are neither 
free nor equal, where growth is not expected, where 
prosperity is not desired, a paper law, unchanging as 
that of the Medes and Persians, may have reason for 
existence ; for under such a rule the people can never 
hope to rise into that highest state of being a law unto 
themselves. In a country like America, a real con- 
stitution should be a vital fact, not a piece of paper, 
and a dubious phrase. England never had a written 
constitution. How could she have ? Her constitution 
is her life. All that she has ever been, ever done, ever 
sufi'ered — these are her constitutions, because they 
are herself What would she gain by trying to write 
down this story in a dozen articles ? She would gain 
a set of manacles. !N'o dozen phrases could express 
the whole of her vitalities. Some of these are ob- 
vious, others latent; no one can remember all the 
past, no one can foresee all the future. Yv^'hy not be 
content to let the nation live ? "Would any sane man 
think of making a constitution for a garden, of hang- 
ing a paper chain on the stems of plants? Yet men 
in a free soil have wider possibilities of change in 
them than trees and flowers. Could anybody dream 
of devising, a constitution for sciences like chemistry, 
astronom}', and physics ? Where you have power of 
growth, you nmsthave order, method, understanding; 
not a final theory, not an infallible law. 

And what ^ve the advantages derived from a Con- 
stitution ? Are you afraid that people would forget 
their principles and betray their freedom, unless they 
w^ere restrained from wandering by these paper notes? 
That is the common fear. But see what this fear 
implies, and saj- whether all that it implies is just. As 
men cannot wander from their own natures, their 
own instincts and passions, yon have to assume that 



UNION. 487 

your Constitution has a life apart froin that of your 
people; that it is a political fiction, not a moral and 
social truth. If the Constitution exists in the blood 
and brain of this bright and tenacious people — if it 
be the genuine product of what they have done, of 
•what they are — you need not fear its being forgotten 
and betrayed. If it is an alien statute, what right 
have you to force it upon them ? 

In the present state of feeling with respect to the 
Constitution, I do not think that anybody would be 
heard with patience who should propose to set the 
people free, by putting it to a decent encl. The time 
for such a work may come. At present no one dreams 
of doing more than amending a defective instrument 
in several places ; so as to cast away some of the very 
worst articles inserted in it by the slave proprietors. 
Only the radicals propose to bring it into harmony 
with the Declaration of Independence. But while 
the political doctors are at work upon it, may it not 
be worth their while to consider — Whether it would 
not be better to confine their task to cutting away the 
obnoxious parts? "Why not open the Constitution by 
removing its restrictions ? Why add to a document 
which they admit to be defective? They know that 
if thit5 paper barrier had not stood in their way, the 
differences between North and South would have 
ended with the defeat of Lee. Why then prepare 
fresh difliculties for their children, by adding new 
compromises to the organic statutes? 

In a few years, E'orth and South will be one again ; 
state rights wilh have been forgotten, and the negro 
will have found his place. A free Republic cannot 
hope to enjoy the repose of a despotic State ; to com- 
bine the repose of Pekin with the movement of San 
Francisco, the order of Miako with the vitality of 



488 NEW AMERICA. 

New York. Ebb and flow may be predicted of the 
future; at one time public thonglit will be found 
ebbing towards separation, personality, and freedom; 
another time it will be found flowing again towards 
union, brotherhood, and empire ; bnt the tides of 
sentiment may bo expected to roll from East to "West, 
from West to East, without provoking a second wreck. 
That article left uncertain in the Constitution, as to the 
power of any one State to part from its fellows without 
their leave, has been now defined by facts. War on 
that question will not come again ; hut heats will 
come, passions will be roused, and orators will take 
the field, even though the sword may not again bo 
drawn ; one side in the fray waxing eloquent on tho 
rights of man, the other side on the power of States.- 
Who shall say which fury burns with the whiter rage ? 
One party will take its stand on personal freedom, the 
other will take its stand on national strength. These 
forces are immortal. One age will fight for indepen- 
dence, a second will fight for empire, just as either the 
Saxon or the Latin spirit shall happen to prevail. 
When these two powers are in poise and balance, 
then, and then only, will the republic enjoy the 
highest share of freedom with the widest share of 
power. 

When the armies came into collision after the fall 
of Fort Sumter, the true banner of the war was raised, 
and the battle was accepted on a broader ground. The 
issue of the fight was then, — What principle shall the 
Great Republic write upon her flag ? Shall her society 
be founded on the principles of Chivalry, or on the 
principles of Equality? Shall industry be branded as 
ignoble ? Shall the !N"ew America be a slave empire 
or a free commonwealth ? 

Under these walls of Richmond the battle of that 



UNION. 489 

principle was fairly fought; with a skill, a pride, a 
valor, on cither side to recall the charges at IvTaseby 
and at Marston Moor ; but the Cavaliers went down, 
and the Middle Ages then lost their final field. 

"When the reign of that martial and seceding spirit 
came to its close in the midst of rout and fire, tho 
milder spirit of Unity and peace, which had only slept 
in the heart of these American hosts, came up to tho 
front. A new order was commenced ; not in much 
strength at first ; not without fears and failings ; yet 
the reign of a nobler sentiment was opened, and every 
eye can see how far it is daily gaining in strength and 
favor; even though it has to contend against craft and 
passion more fatal than the sword. Years may elapse 
before this Union sentiment in the South is strong 
with all the riches of its strength; but the heralds 
have blown their horns, and the soldiers have raised 
their flag. Fulness of life must come with time; 
enough for the hour that the desire for Unity has been 
born afresh. 

Yes; here in Richmond, among these gallant swords- 
men of the South, on whom the war has fallen with 
its deadliest weight — men broken in their fortunes, 
widowed in their afibctions — many admit, and some 
proclaim, that they have made a surprising change of 
front. They are still the same men as before the war, 
but they have vrhecled about and set their faces another 
way. Some, it has been said, cannot make this 
change; they had their part in the past, and with 
the past they fell. Men whose last act was to burn 
this city, when they fled, leaving these blackened 
walls, these broken columns, these empty thorough- 
fares, as a message, a memorial of their despair, may 
think they have the right to be heard, and to be con- 
sidered in these Southern cities ; but it is coming to bo 



490 NEW AMERICA. 

understood that if the past is theirs, for weal and woe, 
there is a future before the world in which they can 
have no share. The victors have set their mark upon 
them, so that they shall fill no further office of com- 
mand. Their friends may grieve over this exclusion; 
but the nation has to live ; and the rank and file of the 
South will not punish itself forever, even for the sake 
of those who, in their enthusiasm, may have misled it 
into death. In fact, the tide has turned ; the same sea 
rolls and swells ; but the ebb of separation has become 
the tide of Union. 

Though late, a goodly number of these planters see 
that their fiery haste, their brave impatience, their 
impetuous valor, had urged them on too fast and far; 
so fast, that in their rage for liberty they would have 
murdered law; so far, that in their quest for indepen- 
dence they would have sacrificed empire. In their 
passion to be free they had forgotten the saving power 
and virtue which belong to order, balance, equipoise 
of powers. To gain their darling wish — the right to 
stand alone — they would have rent society to shreds, 
and put the vv^orld back in its course a thousand years. 
They see their error now, and would undo their work; 
so far as such a deed can ever be done. A few still 
hug their pride and weakness; reading no promise 
in the skies ; and courting the fate of Poland for the 
South. Others among them may be silent ; scanning 
these crumbling streets, yon Yankee sentinels, those 
shouting negroes in the lane, with bitter smile ; but 
time is doing upon these sad spirits its healing work. 
They feel that, having lost their cause, they must 
yield to nature; — an Anglo-Saxon cannot sink into 
a Pole. 

I do not mean to say that here, in Richmond, the 
banner of Robert Lee is trodden in the mire : it is 



UNION. 491 

not; neitlier should it be, since tbat banner gleamed 
only over men who had armed to defend a cause in 
which they found much glory and felt no shame. I 
only say that the banner of Lee has been rolled to its 
staff, and put away among things of the past, with 
much of the chivalric error, the romantic passion, of 
the South, laid up and smoothed among its folds. 
Good sense, if not fraternal love, has been restored to 
these gallant people; who see v/cll enough that the 
past is past, that rage is vain, that the fight is over, 
that a place in the country may yet be won. At pres- 
ent they are nothing ; less than the mean whites ; less 
than their own negroes. The situation cannot last. 
"Most of our young," said a Virginian to me just 
DOW, "are in favor of going in:" that is to say, of 
compromising the dispute, and taking their seats in 
Congress: "they do not like seeming to desert their 
old generals, but they want to live; and they won't 
stand out forever." These younger men, against 
whom the victors entertain no grudge, have nearly 
forgotten the past five years. Youth keeps its eyes in 
front, and there it sees nothing but the ilag. 

Hence it comes that in these very streets of Rich- 
mond, men who were yesterday on horseback, charging 
for the Confederate device, are now heard whispering 
of the Stars and Stripes, with a regret not feigned, an 
affection not put on. "Our grand mishap," said to 
mc a Georgian soldier, not an hour ago, "was our 
change of flag; we should have kept the old silk; we 
should have gone out boldly for the Union; we should 
have put yon Yankees on the outer side ; we should 
have taken our ground on the Constitution, making 
oar enemies the Seceders ; then, we should have won 
the fight, for all the West would have been with us ; 
and, instead of stamping about these blackened walls 



492 NEW AMERICA. 

to-day^ we should have had our pickets at Niagara, 
our sentries at Faueuil Hall." Perhaps he is right. 
But is not this regret of the Georgian an after-stroke ? 
Was any such thought as that of liolding on b}'- the 
old flag, of preserving the Great Eepublic, to be found 
in the Southern States when the war came down ? 
■The rage was then for separation. ' If wiser thoughts 
have come, have they not come by trial, in the wake 
of strife and loss? Those who now put their faith in 
Union, who look to the Capitol, to the White House, 
for safety, held in those years by another doctrine ; 
putting their trust in freedom, independence, person- 
ality. That dogma failed them ; isolation would not 
work; personality would not pay. Law and policy 
were against them ; the instincts of society were too 
strong for them. They fought for their scheme of 
separation ; they failed ; and, failing, lost both prize 
and stake; all that for which they had tempted 
fortune, nearly all that which they had put upon 
the die. 

Happily for the world, thej^ fiiilcd and lost; failed 
by a law of nature, lost by an ordinance of Heaven. 
'^o calamity in politics could have equalled the success 
of a slave empire, founded on the ruin of a strong 
republic. All free nations would have felt it, — all 
honest men would have suffered from it ; but even 
Avith their mistaken cause, their retrograde policy, 
their separatist banner, what a fight they made ! Men 
who can perish gloriously for their faith — however 
false that faith may be — will always seize the imagi- 
nation, hold the affections, of a gallant race. Fight- 
ing for a weak and failing cause, these planters of 
Virginia, of Alabama, of Mississippi, rode into battle 
as they would have hurried to a feast ; and many a 
man who wished them no profit in their raid and fi-ay, 



UNION. 493 

could not help riding, as it were, in line with their 
foaming front, dashing with them into action, follow- 
ing their fiery coarse, with a flashing eye and a bound- 
ing pulse. Courage is electric. You caught the light 
from Jackson's sword, you flushed and panted after 
Stuart's plume. Their sin was not more striking than 
their valor. Loyal to their false gods, to their obsolete 
creed, they proved their personal honor by their deeds; 
these lords of every luxury under heaven, striving 
with hunger and with disease, and laying down their 
luxurious lives in ditch and breach. All round these 
walls, in sandy rifts, under forest-leaves, and by lonely 
pools, lie the bones of young men, of old men, who 
were once the pride, the strength of a thousand happy 
Anglo-Saxon homes. "Would that their sin could be 
covered up with a little sand ! 

Out on yon lovely slope of hill, from the brow of 
which the reddening woods and winding waters of 
beautiful Virginia gladden the eyes of men for leagues 
and leagues, the pious !N"orth has gathered into many 
beds, under many white stones, the ashes of her illus- 
trious dead ; of youths who came down from their 
farms in Ohio, from their mills in Vermont, from their 
schools in Massachusetts; the thew, the nerve, the 
brain of this great family of free-men; who came 
down, singing their hymns and hallelujahs; giving up 
ease, and peace, and love, and studj^, to save their 
country from division, from civil war, from political 
death. Singing their hymns, they fainted by the 
wayside : shouting their hallelujahs, they were stricken 
in the trench and in the field. New England gave its 
best and bravest to that slope. I know a street in 
Boston, from every house in which, death has taken 
spoil ; in the houses of poet and teacher, I have seen 
42 



494 NETT A MEM I CA. 

Rachel mourning with a proud joy for the sons who 
will never come back to her again. These heroes 
sleep on the hill-side, in the city which defied and 
slew them ; they have entered it as conquerors at last; 
and here they will keep their silent watch, the senti- 
nels of a bright and holy cause. All glory to them, 
now and for evermore ! 

Out, too, in yon swamps and wastes, by the deserted 
breastwork, by the fallen fort, by the rank river-margin, 
lie the ashes of a broken and ruined host ; of young 
men, of old warriors, who rode up from the cotton 
lands of Louisiana, from the country-houses of Georgia, 
from the rice-fields of Carolina, to fight for a cause in 
which they had learned to feel their right ; soldiers as 
honest, as brave, and proud as any of their stronger 
and keener foes. But the strong were right, and the 
right were strong ; and the weaker side went down in 
their tierce embrace. They fell together ; their duty 
done, their passion spent. Many a tender ofiice, many 
a solemn greeting, passed between these falling bro- 
thers, who spoke the same tongue, who muttered the 
same prayer, who owned one country and one God. 
They died on the same field, and whitened on the 
same earth. Still, here and there, some pious hand 
picks up their bones together, just as the warriors fell 
in battle, and laying them side by side, leave the two 
brothers who had come to strife, victor and vanquished, 
unionist and seceder, to sleep the long sleep in a com- 
mon bed. 

Would it were always thus! would that the pious 
North, noble in its charity as in its valor, would con- 
done the past ! The dead are past oflfending any more, 
and the pious tongue, in presence of a soldier's dust, 
should ask no question of state and party, but lay the 



UNION. 495 

erring prodigal by his brother's side. Yon sunny 
Richmond slope, on which the setting sun appears to 
linger, tipping v/ith pink the fair white stones, should 
be for North and South alike a place of rest, a sign 
of the New America; an imperishable proof of their 
reconciliation, no less than an everlasting record of 
their strife. 



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